A   SKETCH   OF   SEMITIC   ORIGINS 

SOCIAL  AND  RELIGIOUS 


A   SKETCH 


OF 


SEMITIC    ORIGINS 


SOCIAL  AND   RELIGIOUS 


BY 


GEORGE  AARON  BARTON,  A.M.,  PH.D. 
•H 

ASSOCIATE:  PROFESSOR  OF  BIBLICAL  LITERATURE  AND 
SEMITIC  LANGUAGES  IN  BRYN  MAWR  COLLEGE 


THE  MACMILLAN   COMPANY 

LONDON:  MACMILLAN  &  CO.,  LTD. 
1902 

All  right*  reserved 


COPTKIOHT,    1902, 

BT  THE  MACMILLAN  COMPANT. 


Norknooti 
J.  8.  Cuihing  &  Co.  -  Berwick  St  Smith 
Norwood  Mui.  U.S.A. 


TO 

QTcarijrrs 

CRAWFORD  HOWELL  TOY,  A.M.,  LL.D. 
DAVID  GORDON  LYON,  PH.D.,  D.D. 

AND 

JOSEPH  HENRY   THAYER,  D.D.,  LiTT.D. 

$rflfrgg<mt  in  ^atbarB  SEniberaitg 

THIS   VOLUME   IS   INSCRIBED 
IN    GRATITUDE    AND    AFFECTION 


PREFACE 

THE  studies  which  have  culminated  in  this  volume 
have  occupied  much  of  my  attention  for  the  past  eleven 
years,  and  have  previously  led  to  the  publication  of  sev- 
eral articles.  In  the  autumn  of  1898,  while  giving  a 
course  of  lectures  on  Semitic  religion,  the  various  parts 
of  the  subject  grouped  themselves  so  coherently  in  my 
mind  that  I  could  no  longer  doubt  that  these  studies 
had  led  me  to  the  discovery  of  the  path  trodden  by  the 
Semites  in  the  journey  from  savagery  to  civilization,  in  the 
course  of  which  the  most  characteristic  features  of  their 
social  and  religious  life  were  created.  Since  then  the 
details  have  been  worked  out  with  as  much  care  as  the 
complex  duties  which  attach  to  a  very  comprehensive 
chair  would  permit,  and  are  here  submitted  to  scholars. 

The  writer  is  well  aware  that  to  many  of  his  fellow 
workers  in  Semitic  studies,  who  have  been  engaged  in 
working  different  mines  in  our  large  territory,  any  attempt 
to  sketch  the  course  of  Semitic  evolution  will  seem  prema- 
ture and  impossible.  It  is  the  writer's  conviction,  never- 
theless, that  he  has  chanced  upon  the  trail  along  which 
the  Semites  dragged  themselves  during  those  weary  cen- 
turies when  they  were  working  their  way  from  savagery 
to  civilization,  and  that  he  has  had  the  good  fortune  in 
some  places  to  identify  their  fossil  footprints  and  to  per- 
ceive the  meaning  of  those  identified  in  many  places  by 
others.  Here  and  there  an  identification  of  the  exact 
course  of  the  trail  is  not  at  present  possible,  the  luxuriant 
forests,  the  populous  cities,  or  the  overflowing  seas  of 
later  civilizations  have  so  buried  the  trail  under  thick 
jungles,  massive  mounds,  or  strata  of  rock.  Enough  of 
the  trail  can  still  be  detected  to  render  its  general  course 


yiii  PREFACE 


certain,  aud  to  enable  us  to  guess  with  approximate  accu- 
racy where  its  course  must  have  lain  at  those  points  which 
are  hidden  from  view.  Where  it  is  necessary  to  guess  at 
the  direction  of  this  old  Semitic  pathway,  I  have  endeav- 
ored to  indicate  the  course  which  it  seems  to  me  most 
probable  that  it  followed.  In  these  instances  future 
investigations  may  show  that  I  have  not  divined  with 
exactness  all  its  windings  and  curves,  but  such  knowledge 
will  be  welcomed  by  none  more  gladly  than  by  myself. 

The  study  of  primitive  Semitic  life  necessarily  brings 
to  view  many  unsavory  details.  Professional  students 
will  readily  understand  the  necessity  for  treating  these 
in  the  spirit  in  which  it  is  done.  Should  this  volume 
chance  to  fall  into  the  hands  of  any  others,  they  are  re- 
minded that  it  is  a  study  primarily  not  of  the  pure  white 
lily  which  has  sprung  from  Semitic  soil,  but  of  the  chem- 
istry of  that  soil  itself.  At  the  conclusion  of  the  book 
the  lily  is  not  only  described  and  appreciated,  but  a  point 
of  view  is  gained  where  it  can  be  valued  the  more  highly 
because  we  know  the  blackness  of  the  mire  from  which 
it  springs.  The  Power  which  could  bring  such  purity 
from  such  unpromising  antecedents  impresses  us  anew, 
and,  when  we  reflect  a  little  further,  the  wisdom  of  the 
Providence,  who  prepared  in  such  a  soil  the  very  elements 
which  the  lily  needed  for  its  earthly  nourishment,  shines 
out  in  clearer  light.  Such  a  reader  is  asked  to  judge  the 
book  not  from  the  first  impression  which  its  sociological 
studies  may  make  upon  him,  but  by  the  vantage  ground 
gained  at  the  end. 

In  the  preparation  of  this  volume  I  have  been  greatly 
helped  by  my  colleague,  Professor  Lindley  M.  Keasbey, 
who  first  called  my  attention  to  the  economic  importance 
of  the  palm  tree,  who  has  given  me  much  indispensable 
information  in  regard  to  sociological  literature  and  theo- 
ries, and  has  made  many  valuable  criticisms  and  sugges- 
tions concerning  the  sociological  portion  of  the  work. 
Without  his  aid  this  portion  of  the  book  must  have  been 


PREFACE  ix 

far  more  imperfect  than  it  is.  My  thanks  are  also  due  to 
my  colleague,  Miss  Florence  Bascom,  Ph.D.,  who,  in  like 
manner,  rendered  invaluable  aid  in  those  portions  of  the 
work  which  touch  upon  geological  data,  and  to  my  friend, 
Professor  W.  Max  Miiller  of  Philadelphia,  who  gener- 
ously loaned  me  from  his  library  books  bearing  on  the 
Hamites  which  were  otherwise  inaccessible.  I  am  also 
greatly  indebted  to  my  wife,  who  has  drawn  the  maps  for 
this  volume,  carefully  read  all  the  proofs,  and  made  many 
valuable  criticisms  and  suggestions.  My  obligations  to 
other  scholars  are  numerous  and  great.  An  endeavor  has 
been  made  in  the  foot-notes  to  acknowledge  these,  but  in 
some  parts  of  the  work,  as  in  the  chapter  on  Yahwe,  the 
names  of  some  of  those  whose  work  has  indirectly  con- 
tributed much  to  my  thought  could  not  be  made  to  appear 
in  a  definite  reference.  To  all  such  I  thankfully  ac- 
knowledge my  obligation.  The  articles  of  Thomas  Tyler 
in  the  Jewish  Quarterly  Review  of  July,  1901,  and  of  Hans 
H.  Spoer  in  AJSL.  of  October,  1901,  on  the  Tetragram- 
maton  reached  me  too  late  to  be  noticed  in  discussing 
the  origin  of  the  name  "Yahwe."  I  cannot  see,  however, 
that  they  would  have  materially  changed  the  treatment 
of  the  subject.  The  references  to  Hilprecht's  OBI.  are  to 
the  form  in  which  the  work  first  appeared.  Those  who 
have  the  later  reprint  should  add  214  to  the  number  of 
the  page  references  in  Part  II  in  order  to  find  the  refer- 
ences in  their  edition. 

I  cease  work  upon  the  volume,  conscious  of  its  many 
imperfections,  but  with  the  hope  that  it  may  contribute  a 
little  to  the  knowledge  of  its  great  theme. 

BRYN  MAWK,  PA., 
November,  1901. 


CONTENTS 


CHAPTER  I 

MM 

THE  C'KADLK  or  THE  SEMITES 1 


CHAPTER  n 
PRIMITIVE  SEMITIC  SOCIAL  LIFE 30 

CHAPTER   HI 
SEMITIC  RELIGIOUS  ORIGINS 81 

CHAPTER   IV 

TRANSFORMATIONS    AMONG    THE   SOUTHERN  AND   WESTERN 

SEMITES 123 

CHAPTER  V 
TRANSFORMATIONS  IN  BABYLONIA 155 

CHAPTER   VI 
SURVIVALS    ...........    233 

CHAPTER  VII 

YAHWE 269 

xi 


CONTENTS 


CHAPTER  VIII 

PAQR 

BRIEF  ESTIMATE  OF  SEMITIC  SOCIAL  AND  RELIGIOUS  INFLU- 
ENCE ON  THE  NON-SEMITIC  WORLD 309 


GENERAL  INDEX 323 

INDEX  OF  SCRIPTURE  REFERENCES 339 


ABBREVIATIONS  USED  IN  THE  SUBSEQUENT 
PAGES 

AJSL.      American  Journal  of  Semitic  Languages  and  Literatures. 

AL1.2,8,4-  Assyriche  Lesestuke,  von  Friedrich  Delitzsch,  1st,  2d,  3d, 
and  4th  editions. 

BA.  Beitrage  zur  Assyriologie  und  semitischen  Sprachwisscnschaft, 
herausgegeben  von  Friedrich  Delitzsch  und  Paul  Haupt. 

CIS.         Corpus  Inscriptionum  Semiticarum. 

CTBM.  Cuneiform  Texts  from  Babylonian  Tablets,  etc.,  in  the  British 
Museum,  London,  1896-1901. 

HWB.  Assyrisches  Handworterbuch,  von  Friedrich  Delitzsch,  Leipsig, 
1896. 

JAOS.      Journal  of  the  American  Oriental  Society. 
JBL.         Journal  of  Biblical  Literature. 

KAT2.  Keilinschriften  und  das  alte  Testament,  von  E.  Schrader,  2d 
edition. 

KB.         Keilinschri/lliche  Bibliothek,  herausgegeben  von  E.  Schrader. 

OBI.  The  Babylonian  Expedition  of  the  University  of  Pennsylvania. 
Series  A  :  Cuneiform  Texts.  Vol.  I,  Old  Babylonian  In- 
scriptions, edited  by  H.  V.  Hilprecht,  Philadelphia,  1893  to 
1896. 

PADS.      Proceedings  of  the  American  Oriental  Society. 

Petermann's  Mittheilungen ;  i.e.  Mittheilungen  aus  Justes  Perthes  geo- 
graphischer  Anstalt  wichtige  neue  Erforschungen  auf  dem 
gesammelt  Gebiete  der  Geographic,  von  A.  Petermann. 

R.  The  Cuneiform  Inscriptions  of  Western  Asia,  edited  by  Henry 

Rawlinson.     I  R.,  II  R.,  etc.,  Vols.  I,  II,  etc.,  of  the  same. 

SBOT.  The  Sacred  Books  of  the  Old  and  New  Testaments,  edited  by 
Paul  Haupt. 

ZA.          Zeitschrifte  fur  Assyriologie. 

ZATW.    Zeitschrift  der  alttestamentliche  Wissenschqft,  edited  by  Stade. 

ZDMG.     Zeitschrift  der  deutschen  Morgenlandischen  Gesellschaft. 


A   SKETCH   OF   SEMITIC   ORIGINS, 
SOCIAL  AND   RELIGIOUS 

CHAPTER  I 

THE   CRADLE  OF  THE  SEMITES 

IN   approaching  a   study  of  the   social   and  religious 
origins  of  the  Semitic  peoples,  it  is  necessary,  first  of 
all,  to   ask:  Where  did  the  Semitic  race  take  its  rise? 
Where  was   it   differentiated   from   other  races,  and  in 
what  environment  of  climate  and  soil  were  its  early  insti- 
tutions born  ?    Man,  like  all  other  creatures,  is  profoundly 
influenced  by  his  surroundings.     The  sturdy  character  of 
the  Anglo-Saxon,  though  for  a  time  it  may  survive  in  the 
tropics,  is  not  created  there ;  nor  has  the  careless  laziness 
of  the  negro  been  bred  in  the  arctic  north.     To  under- , 
stand  the  earliest  religious  conceptions   of  the    Semitic  I 
peoples,  we  must  study  the  social  organization  in  which/ 
they  had  their  birth  ;  and  to  form  a  correct  theory  of 
their  social  organization,  it  is  necessary  to  study  its  physi- 
cal environment. 

Our  inquiry  is,  however,  beset  at  the  very  threshold 
with  grave  difficulties.  The  evidence  with  which  we 
have  to  deal  is  very  slight,  and  is  differently  interpreted 
by  different  scholars.  The  best  authorities  widely  differ. 
In  recent  years,  four  different  theories  as  to  the  location 
of  the  Semitic  cradle  land  have  been  put  forward,  in 
which  Babylonia,  Arabia,  and  North  Africa  are  respec- 
tively made  the  primitive  home  of  these  peoples. 

1.  The  advocates  of  the  Babylonian  theory  have  been 
von  Kremer,  Guidi,  and  Hommel. 


SEMITIC  ORIGINS 


VonKremer  set  forth  his  views  in  two  articles  pub- 
lished in  1875,  in  Das  Ausland.1  He  reached  his  results 
from  a  comparison  of  the  vocabularies  of  the  different 
Semitic  tongues.  He  concluded  that  before  the  forma- 
tion of  the  different  Semitic  dialects,  they  had  a  name  for 
the  camel  which  appears  in  all  of  them ;  whereas  they  had 
no  common  names  for  the  date-palm  and  its  fruit  or  for 
the  ostrich.  The  camel  the  Semites  knew  while  they  were 
yet  one  people,  dwelling  together;  the  date-palm  and 
ostrich  they  did  not  know.  Now  the  region  where  there 
is  neither  date-palm  nor  ostrich,  and  yet  where  the  camel 
has  been  known  from  the  remotest  antiquity,  is  the  great 
central  tableland  of  Asia,  near  the  sources  of  the  Oxus 
and  the  Jaxartes,  the  Jaihun  and  Saihun.  Von  Kremer 
thinks  the  Semitic  emigration  from  this  region  preceded 
the  Aryan  or  Indo-European,  perhaps  under  pressure  from 
•the  latter  race ;  and  he  holds  that  the  Semites  first  settled 
in  Mesopotamia  and  Babylonia,  which  he  looks  upon  as 
the  oldest  Semitic  centre  of  civilization. 

Similarly,  the  Italian  Orientalist,  Ignazio  Guidi,  wrote 
in  1879  a  memoir  upon  the  primitive  seat  of  the  Semitic 
peoples,  which  appeared  among  the  publications  of  the 
Reale  Academia  dei  Lincei.2  His  line  of  argument  and 
his  conclusions  are  similar  to  those  of  von  Kremer.  His 
method  of  induction  appears  to  have  been  somewhat  broader 
than  von  Kremer's,  whose  work  seems  to  have  been  un- 
known to  him.  He  took  into  consideration  the  words  in 
the  various  Semitic  languages  which  denote  the  configura- 
tion of  the  earth's  surface,  the  varieties  of  soil,  the  changes 
of  the  seasons  and  climate,  the  names  of  minerals  and  ani- 
mals. He  concluded  that  Babylonia  was  the  first  centre  of 


1  This  article  was  published  in  Das  Ausland,  Vol.  IV,  Nos.  1  and  2, 
and  was  entitled  "Semitische  Culturentlehnungen  aus  dem  Pflanzen  und 
Thierreiche. " 

2  The  title  of  Guidi's  paper  was  "  Delia  sede  primitiva  dei  popoli  Semi- 
tic!."    It  is  inaccessible  to  me  ;  my  account  of  it  is  drawn  from  Wright's 
Comparative  Grammar  of  the  Semitic  Languages,  p.  5. 


THE  CRADLE  OF  THE  SEMITES 


Semitic  life,  and  that  the  primitive  Semites  in  Babylonia 
were  immigrants  from  the  lands  south  and  southwest  of  the 
Caspian  Sea.  This  conclusion  Driver,  in  the  second  edition 
of  his  Use  of  the  Tenses  in  Hebrew^  was  inclined  to  accept. 

Not  radically  different  from  this  is  the  view  of  Hommgl, 
also  published  in  1879.  Like  Guidi,  he  held  that  lower 
Mesopotamia,  i.e.  Babylonia,  and  not  upper  Mesopotamia 
on  the  one  hand  nor  Arabia  on  the  other,  was  the  home  of 
the  primitive  Semitic  people.2  This  view  was  accepted 
by  Vlock  in  the  article  "  Semites,"  in  Herzog's  Real- 
Encyclopedie^  Hommel  has  since  shifted  the  primitive 
home  to  upper  Mesopotamia,  and  now  holds  that  it 
was  the  home  of  these  peoples  before  the  separation 
of  the  Semites  from  the  Hamites,  or,  at  least,  from 
the  Egyptian  branch  of  that  stock.  Egypt  was,  he 
thinks,  colonized  from  Babylonia,  so  that  the  civiliza- 
tion of  the  former  country  was  derived  from  that  of  the 
latter.4 

This  linguistic  method  of  investigation  is,  however, 
precarious.  As  Noldeke  has  pointed  out,  the  fact  that 
one  word  now  denotes  an  object  in  all  the  Semitic  lan- 
guages, may  be  due  to  borrowing  from  one  tongue  by 
another  in  remote  centuries,  the  causes  of  which  we  can- 
not now  trace,  while  the  fact  that  a  word  is  not  common 
to  all  the  languages  of  the  group  may  not  necessarily 
signify  that  the  primitive  Semites  were  ignorant  of  the 
object  which  it  connotes,  but  may  be  due  to  the  displace- 

1  Cf.  p.  250  n. 

2  See  his  Die  Namen  der  Sdugthiere  bei  den  siidsemitischen  Volkern, 
Leipzig,  1879,  p.  406  ff. ;  and  Die  semitischen  Volkern  und  Sprachen,  I, 
1881,  p.  63. 

8  For  a  translation  of  Vlock's  article  see  Hebraica,  II,  p.  147  f. 

*  See  his  article  "  Ueber  den  Grad  der  Verwandtschaft  des  Altagyp- 
tischen  init  dem  Semitischen,"  Beitrage  zur  Assyriologie,  II,  p.  342  ff. 
(1891-2);  also  "Die  Identitat  der  altesten  babylonischen  und  agyp- 
tischen  Gottergenealogie  und  der  babylonischen  Ursprung  der  agyptischen 
Kultur,"  Transactions  of  the  International  Congress  of  Orientalists, 
London,  1892,  pp.  218-244;  and  his  article,  "Babylonia,"  Hastings's 
Dictionary  of  the  Bible,  1898. 


SEMITIC   ORIGINS 


ment  of  the  term  by  another  under  circumstances  which 
now  escape  us.1 

2.  Opposed  to  the  view  that  Mesopotamia  is  the  cradle 
of  the  Semites,  is  the  view  thaj;  Arabia  was  the  primitive 
home.  This  theory  was  defended  by  Hjpjenger  in  1861 2 
and  has  since  been  reaffirmed  by  him.  He  regards  it  as 
an  historical  law  that  agriculturists  do  not  become  nomads, 
and  declares  that  he  would  as  soon  think  that  the  dolphin 
formerly  dwelt  on  the  height  of  the  Alps,  or  the  goat  in 
the  sea,  as  to  think  that  mountaineers  would  become 
nomadic.  Then,  after  describing  the  Nafud  and  the  gen- 
eral features  of  central  Arabia,  he  concludes :  "  It  is  of  no 
importance  whether  the  inhabitants  are  autochthones  or 
are  from  other  neighboring  tribes,  the  Nejd  is  the  fastness 
of  the  above-mentioned  lands  (Syria  and  Mesopotamia), 
which  has  impressed  its  character  upon  the  Semites."3 
In  like  manner,  in  his  later  work,  he  says:  "All  Semites 
are,  according  to  my  conviction,  successive  layers  of 
Arabs.  They  deposited  themselves  layer  on  layer;  and 
who  knows,  for  example,  how  many  layers  had  preceded 
the  Canaanites  whom  we  encounter  at  the  very  beginning 
of  history?"* 

Sayce  also,  in  1872,5  declared:  "The  Semitic  traditions 
all  point  to  Arabia  as  the  original  home  of  the  race.  It 
is  the  only  part  of  the  world  which  has  remained  exclu- 

1  See  Noldeke's  Semitischen  Sprachen,  Leipzig,  1887,  p.  3  ff.  (2d  ed. 
1899),  and  his  article,  "Semitic  Languages,"  in  the  Encyclopaedia  Bri- 
tannica,  9th  ed. 

2  See  his  Das  Leben  und  Lehre  des  Mohammad,  Berlin,  1861, 1,  p.  241  ff. ; 
also  his  Alte  Geographic  Arabiens,  1875,  p.  293. 

8  "Gleichveil  ob  die  Einwohner  Autochthonen  sind  Oder  aus  andern 
Gegenden  stammen,  das  Nejd  ist  die  Veste  jener  Lander,  welche  den 
Semiten  ihren  Charakter  aufgedruct  haben."  Leben  und  Lehre  des 
Mohammad,  Vol.  I,  pp.  242,  243. 

4  "  Alle  Semiten  sind  nach  meiner  Ueberzeugung  abgelagerte  Araber. 
Sie  lagerten  sich  Schichte  auf  Schichte,  und  wer  weiss,  die  wie  vielte 
Schichte  zum  Beispiel  die  Kanaaniter,  welche  wir  zu  Anfang  der  Ge- 
schichte  wahrnehmen,  waren."    Alte  Geog.  Arabiens,  p.  293. 

5  Assyrian  Grammar,  p.  13. 


THE  CRADLE   OF  THE  SEMITES 


sively  Semite."  The  racial  characteristics  — intensity  of 
faith,  ferocity,  exclusiveness,  imagination  —  can  best  be 
explained,  he  thinks,  by  a  desert  origin. 

Sahrader,  in  1873, 1  expressed  views  of  the  same  nature. 
As  a  result  of  a  long  examination  of  the  religious,  lin- 
guistic, and  historico-geographical  relations  of  the  Semitic 
nations  to  one  another,  he  concludes  that  Arabia  is  the 
cradle  of  these  peoples. 

Qe  Goeje  also,  in  his  academical  address  for  1882,2 
declared  himself  in  favor  of  the  view  that  central  Arabia 
is  the  home  of  the  Semitic  race,  as  a  whole.  Like 
Sprenger,  he  lays  it  down  as  a  rule  that  mountaineers 
never  become  inhabitants  of  the  steppe  and  nomadic 
shepherds,  and  so  rejects  the  notion  that  the  Semites  can 
have  descended  from  the  mountains  of  Arrapachitis  to 
become  dwellers  in  the  plains  and  swamps  of  Babylonia. 
He  shows,  in  contrast,  how  nomads  are  constantly  passing 
over  into  agriculturalists  with  settled  habitations;  how 
villages  and  towns  are  gradually  formed,  with  cultivated 
lands  around  them;  and  how  the  space  needful  for  the 
pasture  land  of  the  nomad  is  gradually  curtailed  until, 
for  want  of  land,  he  is  compelled  to  go  elsewhere.  So 
it  was,  he  holds,  with  central  Arabia;  and,  as  a  result, 
its  nomadic  population  was  continually  overstepping 
bounds  in  every  direction  and  planting  itself  in  Oman, 
Yemen,  Syria,  and  Babylonia.  Successive  layers  of  emi- 
grants would  push  their  predecessors  farther  forward  until 
the  whole  of  Mesopotamia,  and  even  portions  of  Africa, 
shared  the  same  fate. 

Wright,  whose  account  of  De  Goeje's  work  I  have 
largely  reproduced,  after  giving  a  re'sume'  of  this  argu- 
ment, observes3  that  this  process  has  often  been  repeated 
in  historical  times,  in  which  Arabic  emigration  has  flooded 


1  See  his  article,  "  Die  Abstammung  der  Chaldaer  und  die  Ursitz  der 
Semiten,"  ZDMG.,  XXVII,  pp.  397-424,  especially  p.  420  ff. 

2  Het  Vaderland  der  Semitische  Volken. 

8  Comparative  Grammar  of  the  Semitic  Languages,  p.  8. 


SEMITIC  ORIGINS 


Syria  and  Mesopotamia.  He  therefore  accepts  the  view 
that  Arabia  is  the  cradle  land  of  the  Semitic  race. 

3.  Still  another  theory,  which  is,  in  some  respects,  as 
will  appear  later,  a  modification  of  the  foregoing,  is  that 
the  earliest  home  of  Jthe  Semites  .is.  to [be ^  found  in  Africa. 
Thus  Palgrave  holds  l  that  the  strong  racial  resemblances 
between  the  Arabs,  Abyssinians,  Berbers,  etc., — espe- 
cially the  form  of  the  jaw  and  the  small  calf  of  the  leg,  — 
together  with  their  social  affinity  and  linguistic  similarity, 
lead  to  the  view  that  the  pure  Semites  of  the  peninsula 
originally  came  from  an  African  rather  than  an  Asiatic 
direction. 

Similarly,  Gerland  reaches,  on  the  basis  of  physical 
resemblances,  such  as  the  formation  of  the  skull,  and  on 
linguistic  grounds,  the  conclusion  that  all  the  Asiatic 
Semites  can  be  traced  in  their  beginnings  to  the  North 
African  regions.  Gerland's  view  is  in  some  respects 
peculiar.  He  holds  to  the  racial  unity  of  the  African 
races,  and  regards  the  Semites  as  one  of  them.  The  Ham- 
ites  and  the  Semites  are  to  him  one  people,  and  even  the 
Bantus  are,  he  thinks,  related  to  them.2 

So  GL;  Bertin  advocated,  in  1882,  the  view  that  the 
Semites  and  Karaites  originated  together  in  Africa,  that 
the  Semites  crossed  into  Arabia,  via  Suez,  and  developed 
their  special  racial  characteristics  in  Arabia  Petra.3 

Njldeke.  too,  in  1887,4  accepted  the  same  view ;  but  he 
put  it  forth  not  as  a  fixed  theory,  but  as  a  modest  hypothe- 
sis. Brinton.  in  1890, 6  championed  this  hypothesis.  He 

1  Article  "  Arabia,"  Encyc.  Brit.,  9th  ed. 

2  See  the  exhaustive  article  "  Ethnography,"    Iconographic  Encyc., 
Vol.  I,  which  is  a  translation  of  the  author's  German  work  on  the  same 
subject.     He  holds  that  sporadic  traces  of  prognathism  and  woolly  hair 
among  the  Semites  is  an  argument  in  favor  of  his  view  (cf.  pp.  369,  370). 

8  Journal  of  the  Anthropological  Institute,  Vol.  XI,  p.  431  ff. 

*  Die  semitischen  Sprache,  p.  9.  Also  his  article  "  Semitic  Languages," 
Encyc.  Brit.,  9th  ed. 

6  See  his  Cradle  of  the  Semites,  Philadelphia,  1890  ;  also  his  Races  and 
Peoples,  New  York,  1890,  p.  132. 


THE  CRADLE  OF  THE  SEMITES 


attempted  to  localize,  somewhat  more  specifically,  the 
place  in  North  Africa  whence  the  progenitors  of  the 
Semites  migrated.  He  argued  that  popular  tradition, 
comparative  philology,  ethnology,  and  archasology,  all 
point  to  "those  picturesque  valleys  of  the  Atlas  which 
look  forth  to  the  Great  Ocean  and  the  setting  sun."  His 
argument  from  popular  tradition  is  based  on  a  passage  in 
the  early  chapters  of  Genesis,  and  is,  as  will  be  pointed 
out  below,  irrelevant;  but  his  philological  and  ethnological 
arguments  are  valid,  as  will  be  shown  in  the  proper  place. 

Morris  Jastrow  also,  in  a  paper  published  under  the 
same  cover  with  Brinton's,1  accepts  the  African  origin 
of  the  Semites,  although  he  rejects  Brinton's  special 
locality  in  the  African  northwest  as  unsupported  by  the 
evidence. 

Likewise,  Keane,2  who  regards  Mauritania  as  the  origi- 
nal home  and  centre  of  dispersion,  not  of  the  Hamites  and 
Semites  only,  but  of  the  whole  Caucasian  race,  naturally 
holds  that  the  Semites  are  of  African  origin.  In  his  latest 
work,3  he  regards  south  Arabia  as  the  earliest  home  of  the 
Semites  after  their  migration  from  African  soil,  and  there- 
fore their  point  of  departure  for  their  several  national 
homes.  Riplev,  after  reviewing  the  various  opinions,/! 
concludes  that  "the  physical  traits  of  the  Arabs  fully 
corroborate  Brinton's  and  Jastrow 's  hypothesis  of  African/ 
descent."4 

This  theory,  that  the  primitive  Semitic  home  was  in 
Africa,  is,  as  the  late  Robinson  Smith  pointed  out,5  not 
inconsistent  with  the  theory  that  Arabia  was  their  earliest 
Asiatic  home,  and  the  point  from  which  they  dispersed. 
If  they  orginated  in  Africa,  the  arguments  for  the  view 
that  the  Arabian  peninsula  was  their  cradle  land  after 

1  Cradle  of  the  Semites. 

3  Ethnology,  Cambridge,  1896,  p.  392. 

«  Man,  Past  and  Present,  1899,  p.  490. 

*  The  Races  of  Europe,  New  York,  1899,  p.  376. 

fi  Wright's  Comparative  Semitic  Grammar,  p.  9  n. 


SEMITIC  ORIGINS 


their  migration  from  the  neighboring  continent  are,  in  a 
good  degree,  reenforced. 

Lastly,  Nathaniel  Schmidt  suggests,  in  a  paper  read  at 
the  Congress  of  Religions  in  Paris  in  1900,  that  the 
Semites  may  have  entered  Arabia  originally  from  Puaint, 
—  Abyssinia  and  Somali,  —  and  that  they  lived  in  Arabia 
long  enough  to  have  received  their  special  characteristics 
from  its  environment. 

4.  Another  view  —  that  Arabia  was  the  original  home 
of  the  HftTnitffl  find  Semites,  and  that  the  former  migrated 
thence  to  Africa  —  finds  supporters  among  some  Egyptolo- 
gikts.  Thus,  Wiedemann  holds  that  the  autochthones  of 
Egpyt  were  a  race  kindred  to  the  Lybians,  and  that  the 
Egyptians  of  the  historical  period  came  into  the  country 
from  Arabia,1  —  an  opinion  which  de  Morgan  shares.2 

Similarly,  Erman  has  recently  expressed  his  conviction  3 
that  Arabia  is  the  home  of  the  whole  Hamito-Semitic  race, 
that  the  Egyptian,  the  Berber  languages,  and  the  lan- 
guages of  Somaliland  and  East  Africa  are  Semitic  in  ori- 
gin, though  of  course  corrupted  by  admixture  with  African 
elements.  On  this  view,  Arabia  was  the  cradle  land  of 
the  Hamites  as  well  as  the  Semites,  the  Hamitic  migra- 
tions to  the  westward  antedating  the  Semitic  migrations 
to  the  eastward  and  northward.  Erman  holds  that  this 
westward  migration  took  place  in  two  streams,  one  to 
Egypt  and  North  Africa,  the  other  to  East  Africa ;  while 
the  poor  region  of  Nubia  possessed  nothing  to  attract 
Semitic  settlers. 


1  Cf.  de  Morgan's  Becherches  sur  les  origines  de  V  Egypte,~Vol.  II  (1897), 
pp.  219,  223,  and  228. 

2  Cf.  op.  cif.,  Vol.  I,  p.  196  ;  Vol.  II,  pp.  52,  53.  But  cf.  W.  Max  Miiller's 
review  in  Oriental  Liter aturzeitung,  I,  78  ff.     This  theory  has  also  been 
successfully  combatted  by  Sergi  ( The  Mediterranean  Race,  pp.  90-100) 
•who  has  shown  that  the  Naqada  tombs  do  not  reveal  a  race  different  from 
the  later  Egyptian,  but  simply  in  an  earlier  stage  of  development. 

8  Cf.  Erman's  article  "  Die  Flexion  des  agyptischen  Verbums,"  in 
Sitzungsberichte  der  kg.  Ak.  d.  Wiss.  zu  Berlin,  1900,  pp.  317-353, 
especially  pp.  350-353. 


THE  CRADLE  OF  THE  SEMITES 


Is  it  possible,  in  view  of  such  slight  and  contradictory 
evidence,  and  such  conflicting  opinions,  to  find  on  this 
matter  any  secure  standing  ground  ?  In  endeavoring  to 
answer  this  question,  we  may  take  our  point  of  departure 
from  the  kinship  and  differences  between  the  Hamitic  and 
Semitic  languages.  These  groups  of  languages,  strikingly 
different  in  many  respects,  present,  notwithstanding, 
some  striking  resemblances.  Two  Egyptologists,  Erman 
and  W.  Max  Miiller,  hold  that  the  roots  of  the  Hamitic, 
like  those  of  the  Semitic  tongues,  were  originally  tri- 
literal.1  The  pronoun,  ordinarily  the  most  sui  generis  of 
the  parts  of  speech  in  a  group  of  languages,  presents,  in 
these  groups,  a  similarity  so  striking  as  to  point  to  an 
original  identity.  The  verbs  in  each  of  these  groups  are, 
in  broad  outline,  constructed  on  the  same  method.  They 
have,  for  example,  in  each  group  but  two  inflexional  forms 
for  tenses,  —  a  perfect  or  aorist,  which  denotes  that  an 
action  is  completed,  and  an  imperfect  or  durative,  which 
denotes  that  it  is  incomplete.  Each  group  treats  the 
weak  verbs  and  derivatives  in  analogous  ways.  Each 
group  forms  intensive  stems  by  doubling  a  letter  or  redu- 
plicating a  root  and  reflexive  stems  in  which,  in  each 
group,  the  letter  t  is  usually  an  important  feature ;  causa- 
tive and  reciprocal  stems  are  also  common  to  both  groups. 
Moreover,  the  general  method  of  verbal  inflexion  —  the 
combination  of  a  fragment  of  a  personal  pronoun  with 
the  stem  —  is  also  common  to  both  groups.  The  two 
groups  have  also  the  same  endings  for  gender  (masc.  w, 
fern.  £).  Four  or  five  of  the  numerals  are  identical, 
and  fifty,  or  possibly  seventy-five,  of  the  actual  words  of 
the  Old  Egyptian  are  identical  with  Semitic  words.2  Both 


1  Cf.  Ennan,  op.  cit.,  p.  350.     W.  Max  Miiller  made  the  same  statement 
at  a  meeting  of  the  Oriental  Club  of  Philadelphia  in  November,  1899. 

2  Thus,  in  Semitic,  "two"  is  expressed  by  the  root  Sn  (Arabic  tn~);  in 
Old  Egyptian,  Coptic,  and  Tameseq,  by  sn;  "six,"  in  Semitic,  by  the 
root  $d3  (contracted  except  in  Ethiopia,  as  e.g.  in  the   Heb.    $$\  in 
Hamitic,  by  sds  (which  appears  in  Tameseq),  contracted  in  Egyptian  to 


10  SEMITIC  ORIGINS 


groups  of  languages  form  verbal  nouns  with  a  prefix  j»; 
each  regards  a  certain  accented  syllable  in  each  word,  or 
group  of  words,  as  important,  and  each  has  therefore  a 
construct  state.  Each  group  has  several  consonants  in 
common  (Aleph,  Waw,  Yodh,  '  Ayiri),  and  each  writes 
without  expressing  the  vowels  in  written  character.1 

These  linguistic  facts  prove  that  the  Semitic  and  Ham- 
itic  races  formed  one  group  of  peoples  for  a  considerable 
period  of  time  after  the  art  of  speech  had  been  developed, 
during  which  time  the  pronoun  was  fixed  and  the  main 
outlines  of  verbal  and  noun  inflexion  were  formed;  but 
that  they  separated  at  a  period  so  remote  that  the  indi- 
vidual names  for  objects  in  the  two  groups  of  languages 
are,  with  few  exceptions,  absolutely  different. 

Friedrich  Miiller  says  concerning  this:    "The  separa- 

ss;  "seven,"  in  North  Semitic  by  £&',  South  Semitic,  sb',  Egyptian,  sfh; 
"eight,"  Semitic,  Smn,  smn,  tmn,  tmn,  Coptic,  smn;  "nine,"  North 
Semitic,  t£,  South  Semitic,  ts',  Tameseq,  tzz.  For  other  identical  words 
common  to  Egyptian  and  Semitic,  see  Erman,  ZDMG.,  Vol.  XL VI, 
pp.  107-126. 

1  For  full  proof  of  these  statements,  the  reader  is  referred  to  Friedrich 
Miiller's  Grundriss  der  Sprachwissenschaft,  Bd.  Ill,  Wien,  1884,  pp.  226- 
417,  Erman's  article  "  Das  Verhaltness  des  aegyptischen  zu  den  semi- 
tischen  Sprachen,"  in  ZDMG.,  Vol.  XLVI  (1892),  pp.  93-126,  and  his 
Aegyptische  Grammatik,  Berlin,  1894,  "Die  Flexion  des  agyptischen 
Verbums,"  in  Sitzungsberichte  d.  Kg.  Als.  d.  Wiss.  zu  Berlin,  1900, 
pp.  317-353  ;  Steindorf's  Koptische  Grammatik,  Berlin,  1894,  Brugsch's 
Grammaire  Hieroglyphique,  Leipzig,  1872,  Giovanni  Collizza's  Lingua 
'Afar,  Vienna,  1887,  Belkassen  ben  Sedira's  Langue  Kabyle,  Alger,  1887, 
Wright's  Lectures  on  the  Comparative  Grammar  of  the  Semitic  Lan- 
guages, Cambridge,  1890,  and  Zimmern's  Vergleichende  Grammatik  der 
semitischen  Sprachen,  Berlin,  1898,  passim,  and  esp.  p.  181.  Mtiller 
finds  three  groups  of  Hamitic  languages:  the  Egyptian,  embracing  Old 
Egyptian  and  Coptic  ;  the  Lybian,  embracing  the  Tameseq ;  and  the 
Ethiopia,  embracing  the  Bedza,  Galla,  Somali,  Saho,  Belin,  and  Chamir 
tongues.  Sometimes  he  includes,  as  on  p.  225,  the  Dankali  or  'Afar 
language,  which  ought  always  to  be  included.  To  the  Lybian  group  the 
Kabyle  and  other  Berber  tongues  should  be  added.  Miiller's  list  of 
Semitic  languages  is  not  as  large  as  it  should  be,  but  this  does  not  affect 
his  argument. 

The  argument  for  the  kinship  of  these  tongues  is  well  stated  in  Crum's 
article,  "Egypt,"  in  Hastings's  Dictionary  of  the  Bible. 


THE  CRADLE  OF  THE   SEMITES  11 

tion  of  the  individual  languages  from  the  common  origi- 
nal occurred  in  such  a  way  that  the  primitive  language 
was  divided  into  two  dialects,  of  which  one  might  be 
called  Hamitic  and  the  other  Semitic.  While  the  primi- 
tive Hamitic  language  was,  at  an  early  time,  divided  into 
individual  tongues,  probably  because  of  the  great  number 
of  the  individuals  who  spoke  it,  and  the  wide  dispersion 
of  the  races  which  used  it,  the  primitive  Semitic  speech  pre- 
served for  a  long  time  a  compact  unity,  probably  because 
of  the  small  number  of  individuals  speaking  it,  and  the 
narrow  limits  in  which  they  lived.  While,  also,  the  primi- 
tive Semitic  language  could  develop  itself  uniformly  with- 
out foreign  influx  within  the  whole  of  the  race  which 
spoke  it,  the  Hamitic  primitive  language  must  at  an  early 
time  have  broken  up  into  a  series  of  individual  tongues, 
in  consequence  of  the  separation  of  the  peoples  who  spoke 
it  and  the  influx  of  strong  foreign  influences.  Therefore, 
it  happens  that  to-day  the  unity  of  the  Semitic  languages 
runs  not  only  through  the  similarity  of  the  articulation 
and  the  grammatical  foundation,  but  also  to  the  identity 
of  roots  and  word-forms;  while,  on  the  other  hand,  the 
Hamitic  languages  betray  the  fact  that  they  belong 
together  merely  by  the  similarity  of  their  foundation  and 
the  form  of  their  roots,  less  often  by  the  identity  of  the 
material  of  the  roots,  and  still  less  often  by  the  identity  of 
the  roots  themselves.1  This  opinion  is  borne  out  by  an 

1  See  Miiller,  op.  cit.,  p.  225  :  "  Die  Loslosung  der  einzelnen  Sprachen 
Ton  gemeinsamen  Grundstocke  ging  derart  von  sich,  dass  sich  zunachst 
die  Grundsprache  in  zwei  Dialekte  spaltete,  von  denen  der  cine  als  hami- 
tische,  der  andere  als  semitische  Stammsprache  bezeichnet  werden  kann. 
Wahrend  die  hamitische  Stammsprache  weiderum  fruhzeitig,  wahrschein- 
lich  in  Folge  der  grossen  Anzahl  der  sie  redenden  Individuen  und  der 
weiten  Verbreitung  der  sie  redenden  Geschlechter,  in  mehrer  Dialekte, 
respective  Einzelsprachen  sich  spaltete,  bildete  die  semitischen  Grund- 
sprache, wahrscheinlich  in  Folge  der  geringen  Zahl  der  sie  redenden 
Individuen  und  der  beschrankten  Verbreitung  derselben,  lange  Zeit  eine 
geschlossene  Einheit.  Wahrend  also  die  semitische  Grundsprache  sich 
gleichmassig  ohne  fremde  Einfliisse  innerhalb  des  ganzen  sie  redenden 
Stammes  entwickeln  konnte,  musste  die  hamitische  Grundsprache  in 


12  SEMITIC  ORIGINS 


examination  of  the  facts  upon  which  it  is  based,  and  is 
accepted  by  scholars  of  eminence.1 

If  we  accept  it,  we  are  led  thereby  to  one  of  two  alterna- 
tives. Either  the  united  Hamito-Semitic  race  lived  at 
some  prehistoric  time  in  western  Asia,  whence  a  large 
number  of  them  migrated  to  Africa,  or  they  were  all  resi- 
dent in  northern  Africa,  whence  the  ancestors  of  the 
Semites  migrated  to  Asia.  It  will  be  noted  that  the  lin- 
guistic evidence,  as  stated  by  Friedrich  Miiller,  favors  the 
latter  conclusion.  The  threads  of  identity  which  bind 
the  Semitic  languages  together  are,  as  Miiller  says,  such 
as  to  make  it  clear  that  the  primitive  Semitic  speech  was 
spoken  by  a  comparatively  small  number  of  people  who 
were  for  a  long  time  sheltered  from  outside  influences; 
while  the  Hamitic  languages,  which  are  much  less  closely 
bound  together,  must  have  been  spoken  by  a  larger  and 
more  widely  scattered  body  of  people.  Now,  it  is  more 
probable  that  a  small  number  of  people  separated  from  the 
main  body  and  settled  in  Arabia,  than  that  the  race  as  a 
whole  originated  in  the  latter  country  and  the  majority 
migrated  to  Africa.  While  the  latter  supposition  is  not 
impossible,  it  is  far  less  likely  to  represent  the  true  order 
of  events. 

Gerland  and  others  have  adduced  the  ethnological  argu- 
ment in  favor  of  the  North  African  origin  of  the  Semites. 
It  will  be  well,  therefore,  to  ask  what  anthropology  has  to 
tell  us  of  the  larger  question  of  the  origin  of  man, —  or  at 
least  of  the  white  race, —  of  its  primitive  home,  and  its 

Folge  der  Trennung  der  Stamme  und  der  machtig  einwirkenden  frem- 
den  Einfltisse  f rtihzeitig  in  eine  Reihe  von  Einzelsprachen  zerfallen.  Daher 
kommt  es,  dass  die  einheit  der  semitischen  Sprachen  nicht  nur  in  der 
Gleichheit  der  Articulation  und  der  grammatischen  Anlage,  sondern 
auch  in  die  Identitat  der  Stamme  und  Wortformen  zutage  tritt,  wahrend 
dem  gegentiber  die  hamitischen  Sprachen  ihrer  Zusammengehb'rigkeit 
bios  durch  die  Gleichheit  der  Anlage  und  Identitat  der  Stoff-wurtzeln, 
noch  seltener  in  der  Identitat  der  Stamme  selbst  verrathen." 

1  Cf.  Peschal,  Races  of  Men,  New  York,  1888,  p.  493,  and  Ratzel, 
History  of  Mankind,  London,  1898,  Vol.  Ill,  p.  182. 


THE   CRADLE   OF  THE   SEMITES  13 

differentiation  from  other  races,  in  order  to  see  whether 
any  confirmation  of  the  solution  of  our  problem  to  which 
philology  points  can  be  found. 

As  to  the  part  of  the  globe  in  which  human  life  first 
appeared,  no  unanimous  verdict  has  been  reached.  Several 
scientists  assign  the  beginnings  of  humanity,  with  con- 
siderable probability,  to  a  continent  which  they  believe 
once  occupied  the  site  of  the  Indian  Ocean,  and  which 
stretched  away  from  Borneo  and  the  Philippines  to  Mada- 
gascar. This  view  is  supported  by  Haeckel,1  Peschel,2 
Ridpath,3  and  Keane.*  Quatrefages,  on  the  other  hand, 
holds  5  that  man  was  developed  from  a  lower  order  of  life 
in  the  region  "  bounded  on  the  south  and  southwest  by  the 
Himalayas,  on  the  west  by  the  Bolor  Mountains,  on  the 
northwest  by  the  Ala-Tau,  on  the  north  by  the  Altai 
range  and  its  offshoots,  on  the  east  by  the  Kingkhan, 
on  the  south  and  southeast  by  the  Felina  and  Kuen- 
Loun." 

Gerland  and  Brinton  hold  still  a  different  theory.  They 
maintain  that  the  Mediterranean  basin,  including  southern 
Europe  and  northern  Africa,  is  the  part  of  the  earth  where 
man  first  appeared.6  Finally,  Giddinqs 7  after  a  thorough 
discussion  of  the  evidence,  concludes  that  "  the  habitat  of 
the  homine  species  was  probably  a  tropical  or  subtropical 
zone,  which  reached  half-way  around  the  earth  from  Java 
northwesterly  to  England."  The  discovery,  in  1894,  of 
Pithecanthropus  erectus,  a  kind  of  missing  link,  in  Java, 


1  History  of  Creation,  New  York,  1884,  Vol.  II,  p.  326. 
*  The  Races  of  Men,  New  York,  1888,  p.  32. 
8  Great  Eaces  of  Mankind,  Cincinnati,  1893,  Vol.  I,  pp.  173-182. 
4  Ethnology,  Cambridge,  1896,  p.  229  ;  cf.  also  Suess,  Anlitz  der  Erde, 
Leipzig,  1883,  Vol.  I,  p.  535. 

8  The  Human  Species,  New  York,  1890,  pp.  175-177. 

6  Inconographic   Encyclopaedia,  Vol.  I,  p.  29,  gives  Gerland's  view. 
Brinton's  is  found  in  his  Races  and  Peoples,  New  York,  1890,  pp.  82-94. 
Gerland  is  not  so  specific  as  Brinton.     He  places  the  cradle  of  the  race  in 
Europe,  but  a  Europe  differing  greatly  from  the  present  continent. 

7  Principles  of  Sociology,  The  Macmillan  Co.,  1896,  p.  219. 


14  SEMITIC  ORIGINS 


would  lend  some  plausibility  to  the  first  or  the  last  of  these 


views. 


Fortunately  our  subject  does  not  compel  us  to  decide 
between  these  contending  scientists.  It  is  becoming  clear 
that  the  beginning  of  the  human  species  is  so  remote  that 
man  was  distributed  at  an  early  date  over  practically  the 
whole  earth,  and  that  the  processes  of  race  formation  have 
been  so  gradual  and  so  long  that  it  is  as  unnecessary 
as  it  is  impossible  to  connect  the  cradle  of  the  Semites 
with  the  birthplace  of  the  race. 

Croll,2  by  showing  that  the  glacial  epochs  have  been 
caused  by  variations  in  the  eccentricity  of  the  earth's 
orbit,  which,  from  astronomical  data,  can  be  computed  in 
terms  of  years,  has  given  us  some  idea  how  long  ago  those 
men  lived  whose  remains  go  back  to  the  glacial  and  to 
earlier  periods.  This  method  of  investigation  has  been 
widely  accepted  by  scientists,  many  of  whom  have  applied 
the  results  in  ways  of  their  own.  While,  therefore,  their 
estimates  of  the  antiquity  of  man  do  not  agree,  they  are  all 
sufficiently  large  to  remove  the  beginnings  of  the  species 
far  from  the  beginnings  of  any  of  the  races  which  now 
exist.  Thus,  Quatrefages3  supposes  that  man  goes  back 
to  Miocene  times,  a  geologic  epoch  which  Croll4  believes 
(ended  about  720,000  years  ago.  Fiske,6  on  the  basis  of 
the  discovery  of  the  fossil  remains  of  man  by  Ribeiro  and 
Whitney  in  the  Pliocene  rocks  of  Portugal  and  California, 

1  Cf.  Giddings,  op.  cit.,  p.  217. 

3  See  his  Climate  and   Time  in  their  Geological  Relations,  London, 
1890,  4th  ed.    This  work  is  a  collection  of  papers,  many  of  which  had 
appeared  earlier  in  the  Philosophical  Magazine  and  other  journals  during 
the  ten  or  twelve  years  prior  to  the  first  edition  of  the  book. 

'  The  Human  Species,  p.  152. 

4  Climate  and  Time,  p.  359. 

6  Excursions  of  an  Evolutionist,  Boston,  1890,  pp.  36,  75-77,  and  148. 
Recent  investigation  tends  to  undermine  the  correctness  of  Whitney's 
inferences;  cf.  William  H.  Holmes  in  American  Anthropologist,  new 
series,  Vol.  I,  p.  107  ff.  Payne,  however,  holds  (History  of  the  New  World 
Called  America,  Vol.  II,  p.  64  ff.)  that  by  the  glacial  epoch  man  was 
present  in  both  the  old  and  the  new  worlds. 


THE  CRADLE  OF  THE   SEMITES  15 

is  led,  by  Croll's  calculations,  to  believe  that  man  was  as 
widely  scattered  over  the  earth  as  the  distance  between 
California  and  Portugal  as  long  as  400,000  years  ago. 
Keane1  estimates  the  age  of  man  as  from  240,000  to 
1, 000, 000  years,  —  a  latitude  rather  startling,  —  Ridpath  2 
at  200,000  years,  Lubbock3  at  hundreds  of  thousands  of 
years;  while  Gerland*  thinks  that  the  facts  of  ethnology 
point  to  at  least  240,000  years. 

Some  have  objected  that  man  could  not  have  lived  so 
long  upon  the  earth  without  undergoing  great  physical 
modifications.  Since  Miocene  times  natural  selection  has 
transformed  all  the  animals,  and  why  should  it  not  have 
transformed  man,  too?  Yet  the  oldest  fossil  remains  are 
almost  identical  in  form  with  the  existing  races  of  men. 
This  difficulty  disappears  when  we  remember  that,  as 
Wallace  has  pointed  out,5  when  once  man's  mind  was 
developed,  natural  selection  would  cease  to  act  upon  his 
body,  and  would  expend  itself  in  expanding  his  mind. 
The  approach  of  a  glacial  epoch  instead  of  rendering  him 
extinct,  or  developing  a  hairy  covering  for  his  body,  would 
sharpen  his  wits  to  enable  him  to  provide  food  and  cloth- 
ing for  himself.  During  the  time  of  his  existence,  there- 
fore, every  other  form  of  physical  life  may  have  been 
entirely  transformed  by  those  laws  of  natural  selection 
which  have  ripened  his  mental  power. 

It  is  clear,  from  the  foregoing  summary  of  opinion,  that 
we  may,  with  perfect  propriety  for  the  purpose  of  the 
present  inquiry,  dismiss  this  larger  subject  of  the  origin 
of  man  and  confine  ourselves  to  the  investigation  of  a 
smaller  part  of  the  question. 

If  we  turn  our  attention  to  the  origin  of  the  white  races, 
the  problem  appears  about  as  difficult  for  one  not  a  profes- 

1  Ethnology,  pp.  56-70. 
8  Great  Races  of  Mankind,  Vol.  I,  p.  150. 
•  Prehistoric  Times,  5th  ed.,  London,  1890,  pp.  383-425. 
4  Iconographic  Encyclopaedia,  Vol.  I,  p.  28. 

8  Natural  Selection  and  Tropical  Nature,  The  Macmillan  Co.,  1891, 
p.  180. 


16  SEMITIC  OKIGINS 


sional  anthropologist  to  handle,  so  little  agreement  has 
been  reached  by  those  who  have  given  the  subject  special 
attention.  Thus,  Hseckel,1  Peschel,2  Brinton,3  Keane,4 
and  Sergi 5  regard  the  Mediterranean  basin  as  the  cradle  of 
the  white  races,  while  Ripley6  gives  convincing  evidence 
that  there  is  no  white  race,  but  that  at  least  three  distinct 
white  races  are  traceable  in  Europe :  the  Teutonic,  or  Homo 
Europseus,  most  distinctly  preserved  in  Scandinavia ;  the 
Alpine  (for  which  he  rejects  the  name  Celtic),  most  clearly 
preserved  among  the  lower  classes  of  Austria  and  Bavaria, 
and  clearly  of  the  same  type  as  the  prehistoric  lake- 
dwellers  of  Switzerland;7  and  the  Mediterranean  race, 
most  clearly  defined  in  Corsica,  Sardinia,  and  the  Iberian 
peninsula,  and  clearly  identical  with  the  Berber  race.8 
Ripley  recognizes,  as  the  others  do,  that  the  race  of  the 
south  of  Europe  is  identical  with  that  of  North  Africa, 
and  that  it  is  a  white  race.  These  are,  after  all,  the  only 
points  which  affect  our  problem.  Sergi  holds  that  the 
substratum  of  all  the  population  of  Europe  is  composed  of 
this  Mediterranean,  or  Eurafric  race.9 

Gerland  introduces  a  difficulty  into  the  problem,  how- 
ever, by  denying  that  the  Semites  belong  to  the  white 
race,  and  would  connect  them  with  the  black.  Thus  he 
says :  "  The  Arabic-Africans  are  one  ethnological  race,  or 
division  of  mankind.  .  .  .  Kai-Koin,  Bantu,  and  Negro 
tribes  exhibit  the  same  physical  characteristics  as  the 
Semites ;  and  their  languages  show  the  path  by  which  the 
Semitic  reached  its  goal."10  This  opinion  does  not  seem 

1  History  of  Creation,  Vol.  II,  p.  321. 
8  Races  of  Men,  pp.  480-518. 

*  Races  and  Peoples,  pp.  97-139. 

*  Ethnology,  ch.  xiv. 

6  Mediterranean  Race,  New  York,  1901. 

6  The  Races  of  Europe,  ch.  vi,  especially  pp.  121-130. 

7  Cf.  The  Lake  Dwellings  of  Europe,  by  Robert  C.  Monro,  London, 
Paris,  Melbourne,  1890. 

8  See  op.  cit. ,  pp.  247  and  276. 

9  The  Mediterranean  Race,  New  York,  Scribners,  1901. 

10  Iconographic  Encyclopaedia,  Vol.  I,  pp.  369,  370. 


THE  CRADLE  OF  THE  SEMITES          17 

to  rest  on  a  sufficiently  secure  basis.  The  occasional 
prognathism  and  woolly  hair  observed  among  the  modern 
Arabs,  on  which  he  relies,1  is  much  more  likely  due  to 
mixture  brought  about  in  recent  times  by  the  Arabic  slave 
raids  into  Africa,  which  have  been  going  on  for  centuries. 
Travellers  in  Arabia  testify  that,  in  consequence  of  this, 
amalgamation  of  races  is  still  going  on  there.2 

The  Bantu  languages,  as  described  by  Miiller,3  exhibit, 
so  far  as  I  can  see,  no  real  kinship  to  the  Semitic  tongues. 
The  pronouns  are  not  similar  to  the  Semitic,  as  is  the  case 
-with  the  Hamitic  pronouns ;  the  tenses  of  the  verbs  are 
more  like  those  of  the  Aryan  than  those  of  the  Semitic 
tongues,  so  that  the  similarity  seems  to  be  reduced  to  the 
fact  that  the  Bantu  languages  have  causative,  reflexive, 
reciprocal,  and  causative-reflexive  stems.  These  are,  how- 
ever, formed,  for  the  most  part,  by  afiormatives  instead  of 
preformatives,  as  in  Semitic,  and  cannot  be  held  to  prove 
kinship.  It  seems  safe,  therefore,  to  follow  the  prevailing 
opinion  and  class  the  Semites  with  the  white  races.  Sergi, 
moreover^  hasTpointed  out  that  many  of  the i  Karaites  in 
North  Africa  are  to-day  blonds,  and  that  they  are  probably 
native  there.  The  pigmentation  of  the  skin  is,  he  believes, 
due  to  the  altitude  of  the  country  in  which  a  people  lives.4 
If  this  be  true,  the  question  of  complexion  need  not 
seriously  trouble  us. 

If  now,  with  Ripley,  we  conclude  that  the  Alpine  race 
is  identical  with  the  race  of  the  prehistoric  lake-dwellers, 
we  shall  also  look  for  the  perpetuation  of  very  ancient 
racial  types  in  the  Mediterranean  race.  The  Mediter- 
ranean basin  has  at  different  times  undergone  such  changes 
of  level  that  its  north  and  south  shores  have  been  united 
at  Gibraltar,  or  by  way  of  Italy,  Sicily,  and  Tunis,  or  in 

1  See  above,  p.  6  note  2. 

•  Cf.  Palgrave's  Central  and  Eastern  Arabia,  Vol.  I,  p.  452,  Vol.  II, 
pp.242,  272,  and  302;  also  Doughty 's  Travels  in  Arabia  Deserta,  Cam- 
bridge,  1889,  Vol.  I.  p.  553,  Vol.  II,  pp.  80,  171,  and  337. 

8  Cf.  Grundriss  der  Sprachwissenschaft,  Vol.  I,  Pt.  II,  pp.  238  ff. 

*  The  Mediterranean  Race,  pp.  59-76. 

c 


18  SEMITIC   ORIGINS 


both  places.1  This  fact  accounts  for  the  unity  of  the 
fauna  and  flora  on  the  two  sides  of  the  sea.  At  the  same 
time  the  Sahara  desert  was,  at  least  in  part,  submerged, 
so  that  the  northern  part  of  Africa  was  separated  from  the 
southern  and,  through  long  lapse  of  time,  the  life  of  the 
two  parts  of  the  continent  became  distinct.  This  condi- 
tion was  probably  terminated  by  the  beginning  of  the  last 
glacial  epoch.  It  is  probable  that  the  Mediterranean  race 
was,  in  this  far-off  time  and  under  these  conditions, 
developed. 

Boyd  Dawkins,2  who  is  followed  by  Fiske,3  tells  the 
story  of  the  succession  of  the  races  of  men  in  Europe  in  a 
most  attractive  way.  If  we  could  follow  him  we  might 
enter  upon  some  very  pleasing  speculations.  His  results 
are  not  admitted  by  the  great  number  of  anthropologists, 
however,  and  seem  to  be  based  on  insufficient  data.  We 
must  therefore  be  content  to  follow  a  more  sober  path. 

If  we  take  the  more  sober  statement  of  Ripley  and  Sergi, 
that  the  race  still  distinctly  marked  in  Corsica,  Sardinia, 
and  the  Spanish  peninsula  is  identical  with  the  Berber 
race  of  North  Africa,  we  have  the  clew  for  which  we  have 
been  seeking.  The  late  Count  von  der  Gabelenz,4following 
the  lead  of  certain  ethnologists  who  thought  they  detected 
racial  affinities  between  the  Basques  and  Berbers,  endeav- 
ored to  go  further,  and  to  show  that  the  tongue  of  this 
little  people  of  the  Pyrenees  is  kindred  to  that  of  the 
Berbers  of  North  Africa.  If  this  could  be  established,5 

1  Cf.  Suess's  Anlitz  der  Erde,  Leipzig  und  Prag,  1883,  Vol.  I,  p.  771 ; 
Neumahr's  Erdgeschichte,  Leipzig  und  Wien,  1890,  Vol.  II,  p.  698 ;  and 
Wallace's  Geographical  Distribution  of  Animals,  The  Macmillan  Co., 
1876,  Vol.  I,  pp.  113-115,  and  201  ff. 

8  Cf.  his  Man  in  Britain  and  his  Place  in  the  Tertiary  Period,  London, 
1880,  pp.  161-172,  and  ch.  vii. 

8  Cf .  his  Excursions  of  an  Evolutionist,  pp.  39,  44-46. 

*  See  Die  Verwandtschafl  der  Baskischen  mit  den  Berber-sprachen 
Nord-Afrikas,  Brunswick,  1894.  He  published  a  previous  essay  on  the  sub- 
ject in  the  Sitzungsberichte  der  Ak.  d.  Wiss.  zu  Berlin,  1893,  pp.  593-613. 

6  See  Brinton's  Races  and  Peoples,  p.  112,  and  Keane's  Ethnology, 
p.  378. 


THE  CRADLE  OF  THE  SEMITES          19 

the  threads  which  connect  the  Berbers  with  the  races  of 
the  Iberian  peninsula  would  be  greatly  strengthened ;  but 
his  effort  cannot  be  pronounced  a  success.  He  admits  that 
the  languages  differ  in  structure  of  speech,  in  gender,  and 
in  most  of  the  formatives ;  but  urges  that  they  have  cer- 
tain analogous  laws  of  phonetic  change,  and  that  there  is 
a  resemblance  in  a  few  culture  words,  such  as  the  names 
of  animals  and  of  articles  of  dress.  These  names,  how- 
ever, afford  no  basis  of  argument  whatever,  as  they  may  all 
have  been  borrowed  during  the  Arabic-Berber  occupation. 
Stumme *  has  pointed  out  that  they  seem  quite  as  much 
Arabic  as  Berber —  a  fact  which  seems  to  make  the  hypothe- 
sis just  advanced  the  more  probable.  The  labor  of  von 
der  Gabelenz  seems  to  have  been  suggested  by  a  mistake, 
for  Ripley  now  comes  forward  and  proves  that  there  is  no 
pure  Basque  type.2  Without  the  aid  of  philological  argu- 
ments, however,  we  may  rely  upon  the  fact,  in  which  all 
anthropologists  agree,  that  the  race  on  the  two  sides  of 
the  Mediterranean  is  identical. 

We  noted  above  that  the  geologic  changes  which  sepa- 
rated North  Africa  from  Europe  occurred  by  the  beginning 
of  the  last  glacial  epoch.  Croll 3  calculates  that  that  epoch 
began  about  240,000  and  ended  about  80,000  years  ago. 
The  free  interchange  by  land  necessary  to  make  this  iden- 
tity of  race  must,  therefore,  have  occurred  before  this 
remote  period,  and  must  have  been  going  on  before  that 
for  a  time  sufficiently  long  to  fix  a  racial  type  so  constant 
that  it  still  persists  on  both  sides  of  the  Mediterranean. 
During  the  millenniums  which  have  elapsed  since  this 
epoch  this  race  has  persisted  in  these  regions,  has  absorbed 
all  foreign  elements  which  have  been  injected  into  it,  and 
has  maintained  its  identity  in  the  face  of  everything. 

1  Cf.   Literarisches   Centralblatt  for  1895,  p.  581.     For  other  criti- 
cisms of  von   der  Gabelenz's  work,  see  Berlin  philologisches  Wochen- 
schrift,  Vol.  XXV,  p.  784,  The  Academy,  Vol.  XLIV,  p.  93,  and  Science, 
Vol.  XXII,  p.  77. 

2  Op.  cit.,  ch.  viii. 

8  Climate  and  Time,  chs.  xix  and  xx,  especially  pp.  328  and  342. 


20  SEMITIC  ORIGINS 


So  far  as  I  know,  the  general  unity  of  the  Hamito- 
Semitic  stock  is  not  seriously  questioned.1  We  may  grant 
that,  as  they  moved  out  from  their  original  home,  they 
may  have  imposed  their  languages  upon  foreign  tribes, 
and  thus  have  become,  in  course  of  time,  somewhat  modi- 
fied at  the  extremities ; 2  nevertheless,  the  general  racial 
type  is  well  marked,  showing  that,  on  the  whole,  they  are 
rightly  classed  together.  Among  the  Hamitic  peoples  we 
may  expect  to  find  traces  of  racial  mixture  in  Somaliland, 
among  the  Dankils,  and  the  people  of  that  region;  but 
for  the  rest  of  the  Hamitic  stock  a  purer  racial  type  appears 
to  exist,  and  the  kinship  of  the  Hamitic  tongues,  which 
links  the  Berber  languages  to  the  ancient  Egyptian  and 
to  those  of  East  Africa,  and  through  these  to  the  Semites, 
proves  that  there  exists  either  a  real  kinship,  or  that 
through  conquest  one  race  has  imposed  its  language  upon 
the  rest.  The  latter  alternative  is  ruled  out,  it  seems  to 
me,  notwithstanding  the  views  of  Erman  3  and  others,  by 
the  consideration  that  the  records  of  a  part  of  the  Hamitic 
race  go  back  to  the  very  dawn  of  history,  and  that  in  these 
records  from  Egypt  we  have  no  trace  of  such  an  extensive 
conquest  as  would  be  required  to  account  for  this  unity  of 
language.  Such  a  conquest  would  have  to  be  early  to 
allow  time  for  the  tongues  to  develop  their  striking  differ- 
ences. At  such  an  early  time  we  have  no  record  of  a  con- 
quest of  large  parts  of  North  Africa,  and  the  conditions 
for  it  did  not  exist.  Further,  as  Sergi  has  pointed  out,4 
the  fact  that  the  Berbers  developed  an  independent  system 

1  Sergi  seems  to  imply  that  they  are  distinct,  for  example  in  his  discus- 
sion of  the  Hittites  and  Phoenicians  (Mediterranean  Bace,  pp.  150-163), 
but  he  does  not  enter  fully  into  the  subject. 

2  See  Ripley's  Races  of  Europe,  p.  376. 

8  See  Sitzungsberichte  d.  kgl.  Ak.  d.  Wiss.  zu  Berlin,  1900,  pp.  350- 
353.  Cf.  also  de  Morgan  and  Wiedemann,  in  de  Morgan's  Recherches  sur 
les  Origines  de  VEgypte,  Vol.  I,  p.  196.  Deniker  accepts  de  Morgan's 
views,  but  is  in  doubt  whether  the  Hamitic  peoples  originated  in  Asia  or 
Europe.  Cf.  his  Races  of  Man,  London,  1900,  pp.  426,  428. 

*  Mediterranean  Race,  p.  66  ff. 


THE   CRADLE   OF   THE   SEMITES  21 

of  writing,  wholly  uninfluenced  by  hieroglyphic  Egpytian, 
proves  that  no  such  conquest  can  ever  have  taken  place. 
We  must  therefore  conclude  that  the  real  explanation  is 
in  the  fact  of  kinship. 

If,  then,  the  Berbers  are  a  real  part  of  the  Hamitic  race, 
and  at  the  same  time  are  a  part  of  that  Mediterranean  race 
which  has  been  resident  in  this  region  since  the  last  glacial 
epoch,  we  have  at  last  some  secure  ground  on  which  to 
tread.  It  becomes  clear  that  the  southern  shore  of  the 
Mediterranean  was  the  original  home  of  the  Hamito- 
Semitic  race ; 1  that  at  some  time  since  the  glacial  period, 
but  after  the  germ  of  languages  still  spoken  had  begun  tOj 
develop,  the  Semites  were  separated  from  their  Hamitic 
brethren,  and  in  their  migrations  ultimately  reached 
Arabia,  and  that  the  more  numerous  Hamites  gradually 
spread  themselves  over  the  northern  part  of  Africa.  Eth- 
nology thus  confirms  the  conclusion  to  which  the  linguistic 
phenomena  of  the  two  families  of  languages  —  the  Semitic 
and  Hamitic  —  had  led  us ;  viz.  that  the  Semites  n^gpd^i 
Igom  Africa,  and  not  the  Hamite.s_feom  Asia.  How  long 
ago  these  movements  began  we  cannot  tell.  If  the  glacial 
epoch  ended  80,000  years  ago,  who  knows  how  much  of 
the  period  which  has  elapsed  since  then  may  not  have 
been  occupied  by  the  various  movements  which  have 
transformed  the  Hamito-Semitic  family  into  the  nations 
known  to  history? 

In  this  connection  we  may  note  that  the  arguments  of 
Hommel  in  favor  of  the  Babylonian  origin  of  the  Egyptian 
civilization,2  even  if  they  were  much  stronger  than  they 
are,  would  have  no  bearing  on  the  point  in  question ;  for 
if  it  could  be  proven  that  the  oldest  monuments  of  Egyp- 

1  So  Paulitschke  holds  that  the   Hamites  were   autochthones  of  the 
northern  coast  of  the  African  continent,  Beitrdge  zur  Ethnographic  und 
Anthropologie  der  Somcll  Galla  und  Horari,  2ded.,  Leipzig,  1888,  p.  7. 

2  See  his  article,  "  Ueber  den  Grad  der  Verwandtschaft  des  Altagypti- 
schen  mit  dem  Semitischen,"  in  Beitrdge  zur  Assyriologie,  Vol.  II,  pp.  342- 
358,  and  his  article,  "  Babylonische  Ursprung  der  agyptischen  Kultur," 
in  Trans.  Inter.  Cong.  Orient.,  London,  1892,  pp.  218-257. 


22  SEMITIC  ORIGINS 


tian  culture  were  inspired  by  influences  from  Mesopotamia, 
it  would  only  demonstrate  that  there  was  a  western  move- 
ment of  migration  from  the  Tigris-Euphrates  valley  thou- 
sands of  years  later  than  the  time  of  which  we  are  speaking. 
That  there  have  been  many  migrations  of  Semites  in  vari- 
ous directions,  no  one  acquainted  with  early  history  will 
deny.  Should  Hommel's  contention  be  granted,  then 
(and  I  am  by  no  means  convinced  that  it  should  be),  it 
has  no  more  bearing  on  the  movement  in  the  opposite 
direction,  in  the  remote  period  under  discussion,  than  the 
Mohammedan  conquest  of  Egypt  has. 

The  arguments  of  von  Kremer,  Guidi,  and  Hommel, 
referred  to  above,  in  favor  of  regarding  Babylonia  as  the 
earliest  centre  of  Semitic  culture  —  the  cradle  of  the 
Semitic  race  into  which  it  was  put  soon  after  its  birth 
in  the  high  regions  east  of  the  Caspian  Sea  —  cannot  be 
regarded  as  credible  in  opposition  to  the  Afro-Arabic 
origin. 

Their  argument  is  met  by  the  following  objections: 
(1)  It  is  based  on  linguistic  data,  which  Bertin 1  and 
Noldeke2  have  shown  to  be  precarious.  It  is,  as  Bertin 
points  out,  precisely  the  objects  which  are  most  common 
for  which  most  synonyms  exist  in  a  language,  some  of 
which  would  survive  in  one  of  its  derived  tongues  and 
others  in  another.  (2)  It  places  the  primitive  Semitic 
home  in  a  region  where,  at  the  dawn  of  history,  the 
Semites  were  in  conflict  with  other  races,  from  one  of 
which  many  scholars  hold  that  the  resident  Semites  bor- 
rowed much  of  their  civilization.  These  races  so  pro- 
foundly modified  the  Semitic  spoken  in  the  region  that 
it  has  suffered  more  deterioration  than  any  other  Semitic 
tongue.  Surely  it  will  take  more  than  linguistic  evidence 
to  convince  us  that  the  primitive  home,  in  which  the 
Semites  developed  those  special  characteristics  which  so 
strikingly  differentiate  them  from  other  races,  was  in  such 

1  See  Journal  of  the  Anthropological  Institute,  Vol.  XI,  p.  426. 

2  Die  semitischen  Sprachen,  p.  3  ff. 


THE   CRADLE   OF  THE   SEMITES  23 

a  region.  (3)  This  theory  would  compel  us  to  believe 
that  the  Semites  migrated  from  the  fertile  plains  of  Baby- 
lonia to  the  wastes  of  Arabia;  and  it  offers  no  sufficient 
motive  for  such  migration,  although  it  necessarily  puts 
the  entrance  into  Arabia  at  a  comparatively  late  date,  and 
has  to  face  the  fact  that  in  historic  times  the  movement 
has  been  all  the  other  way.  (4)  It  in  no  way  satisfac- 
torily accounts  for  the  connection  between  the  Semitic 
and  Hamitic  stock,  and  leaves  utterly  unexplained  the 
fact  that  the  Hamitic  languages  are  less  closely  related  to 
one  another  than  the  Semitic,  though  all  the  tongues  of 
the  two  groups  are  kindred.  (5)  The  anthropological 
argument,  as  we  have  seen,  is  against  it. 

Of  the  four  classes  of  arguments  by  which  Brinton J  sup- 
ports his  theory  of  the  North  African  origin  of  the  Semites, 
two  —  the  traditional  and  the  archaeological  —  may  be 
dismissed  at  once.  The  Biblical  traditions  embodied  in 
Genesis  ii  and  iii,  even  if  the  word  qedem  could  be  trans- 
lated "eastward,"  as  he  supposes,2  cannot  possibly  refer  to 
events  so  far  in  the  past  as  the  original  movement  of  the 
Semitic  from  the  Hamitic  races.  This  event  must  have 
been  separated  from  the  Biblical  writer  by  at  least  several 
thousand  years  —  a  period  through  which  the  memory  of 
no  uncivilized  people  carries  a  reliable  tradition.  The 
memory  of  the  Biblical  tradition  may  go  back  to  Baby- 
lonia, and  may,  as  we  shall  see  in  a  subsequent  chapter, 
refer  to  practices  born  in  Arabia  and  perpetuated  in  Baby- 
lonia and  elsewhere;  but  it  certainly  refers  to  far  later 
events  in  the  history  of  the  Semites  than  their  primal 
migration.  His  archaeological  argument  from  the  method 
of  using  the  bow  known  as  the  "  arrow-release  " 3  is,  for 
similar  reasons,  of  little  if  any  significance.  It  is  a 
practice  found  in  many  parts  of  the  world. 

The  linguistic  and  ethnological  arguments  on  which 

1  The  Cradle  of  the  Semites,  Philadelphia,  1890. 

8  Op.  cit.,  pp.  5,  6. 

8  Op.  cit.,  p.  11.    Cf.  Jastrow's  criticism  of  it,  ibid.,  p.  23. 


24  SEMITIC   ORIGINS 


others  had  laid  stress  before  him  are,  as  we  have  seen, 

valid,  and  in  the  absence  of  weighty  reasons  for  any  other 

•  view  must  be  considered  convincing.     We  therefore  hold 

[  that  North  Africa  was  the  home  of  the  Hamito-Semitic 

I  stock.1     We  cannot,  so  far  as  I  can  see,  with  our  present 

knowledge,   settle  upon  any  special   locality  there   and 

claim  that  this  rather  than  another  was  the  place  where 

this  race  first  appeared.2     Its  habitat  must  have  included 

the  Mediterranean  coast  lands,  from  whence  it  could  pass 

into  southern  Europe. 

As  has  been  already  pointed  out,  the  theory  that  Africa 
was  the  primitive  home  of  the  Hamito-Semitic  race  in  no 
way  conflicts  with  the  ,  theory  of  Sprenger,  Sayce,  De 
Goeje,  and  Wright,  that  Arabia  was  the  specific  home  of 
the  Semites,  —  the  country  where  their  peculiar  character- 
istics were  developed  and  the  centre  from  whence  the 
Semitic  nations  radiated  to  other  lands.  All  the  argu- 
ments they  have  urged  seem  to  me  valid,  so  that,  as  the 
late  Robertson  Smith  perceived,  though  the  Semites  came 
from  Africa,  Arabia  is  the  centre  from  which  they  spread.8 
It  will  be  remembered  that  Friedrich  Miiller,  in  the 
passage  quoted  from  him  above,4  suggested  that  the 
greater  unity  which  the  Semitic  languages  present,  when 
compared  with  the  Hamitic,  is  probably  due  to  the  fact 
that  the  primitive  Semitic  tongue  was  spoken  by  a  smaller 
number  of  people,  who  lived  in  a  more  confined  area  than 
was  the  case  with  the  primitive  Hamitic.  This  sugges- 
tion grows  naturally  out  of  the  nature  of  the  two  groups 
of  languages,  and  commends  itself  as  true.  It  harmonizes 

1  So  also  Ratzel.    See  his  History  of  Mankind,  Vol.  Ill,  p.  181 ;  "The 
Hamites  are  the  aborigines  of  Africa." 

2  Brinton  holds  that  this  race  originated  in  the  vicinity  of  the  Atlas 
Mountains,  while  Sergi  formerly  held,  and  still  inclines  to  believe,  that 
East  Africa,  in  the  neighborhood  of  Somaliland,  is  their  primitive  home. 
Cf.  Mediterranean  Eace,  pp.  42,  43,  70. 

8  Cf.  Wright's  Comparative  Grammar  of  the  Semitic  Languages,  p.  9  n. 
Cf.  above,  p.  7,  n.  6. 
*p.  10  ff. 


THE   CRADLE  OF  THE   SEMITES  25 

also  with  the  view  that  the  Semites  migrated  from  Africa 
(since  the  emigrants  would  naturally  be  few  in  comparison 
with  those  who  would  remain),  and  that  within  the  com- 
paratively narrow  confines  of  central  Arabia  they  long 
lived  in  close  contact  with  one  another  and  separated 
from  the  rest  of  the  world. 

One  comes  occasionally  across  a  writer  who  holds  that 
the  pure  Arabs  entered  Arabia  from  Abyssinia.1  If  this 
means  that  they  entered  Arabia  as  Hamites,  and  were 
afterward  differentiated  from  the  Hamitic  peoples,  it  may 
possibly  be  true;  but  if  it  means  that  Abyssinia  is  the 
cradle  of  the  Semitic  peoples  and  Arabia  only  its  centre  of 
distribution,  the  view,  not  to  mention  a  social  argument 
which  will  appear  in  a  future  chapter,  is,  for  the  follow- 
ing reasons,  untenable:  (1)  The  physical  characteristics  of 
Abyssinia2  and  Somaliland  are  not  such  as  to  have  iso- 
lated the  Semites  for  a  long  period  from  foreign  influ- 
ences in  such  a  way  as  to  produce  the  linguistic  results 
which  appear  among  them;  and  (2)  Hamitic  tribes  (the 
Afars  or  Dankils,  the  Gallas,  and  Somalis)  now  lie  to  the 
south  and  southeast  of  the  Semitic  inhabitants  of  Abys- 
sinia, so  that  the  Semitic  population,  driven  in  like  a 
wedge,  separate  these  Hamites  from  the  Hamites  of 
Egypt.3  It  is  clear,  therefore,  that  the  Abyssinian 
Semites  are  late  intruders  in  this  region.  The  Geez 

*Cf.  the  article  "Arabia"  in  Encyc.  Brit.,  9th  ed.,  and  Schmidt's 
paper  read  before  the  Congress  of  Religions  in  Paris. 

2  Cf.  The  Sacred  City  of  the  Ethiopians,  being  a  Record  of  Travel  and 
Research  in  Abyssinia  in  1893,  by  J.  Theodore  Bent,  London,  1893,  in 
which  are  many  descriptions  of  the  country.  Cf.  also  Ratzel's  History 
of  Mankind,  Vol.  Ill,  p.  222  ff. ;  and  Jules  Borelli,  Ethiopie  Meridionale, 
Paris,  1890,  passim ;  also  Modern  Abyssinia,  by  Augustus  B.  Wylde, 
London,  1901,  ch.  xx. 

8  Brinton's  Races  and  Peoples,  p.  131 ;  Gerland,  Iconographic  Encyclo- 
paedia, Vol.  I,  p.  352  ;  and  Ridpath's  Great  Races  of  Mankind,  Vol.  Ill, 
pp.  459-472.  The  objection  of  Erman  (Sitzsungsberichte  der  Kgl.  Ak. 
d.  Wiss.  zu  Berlin,  1900,  p.  352) ,  following  Lepsius,  that  the  Nubians  are 
non-Hamitic  and  also  intervene  between  the  Hamitic  nations  may  be 
obviated  by  one  of  two  considerations :  either  the  Nubians  may  have 


26  SEMITIC   ORIGINS 


civilization,  especially  in  its  ancient  form,1  has  so  many 
characteristics  in  common  with  that  of  south  Arabia,  — 
characteristics,  too,  which  appear  more  at  home,  as  we 
shall  show  below,  in  Arabia,  —  that  there  can  be  no  doubt 
but  that  it  is  the  result  of  a  westward  Semitic  movement 
from  that  country  across  the  straits  of  Bab-el-Mandeb, 
and  not  the  unmoved  remnant  of  the  primitive  Semitic 
stock. 

If  now  it  be  asked  what  can  have  induced  the  Semites 
to  enter  so  sterile  a  country  as  Arabia,  we  can  only  answer 
by  conjectures.  It  must  be  noted  that  their  migration 
probably  occurred  so  long  ago  that  the  Nile  valley  had 
not  begun  to  be  cultivated,  so  that  they  were  not  tempted 
on  account  of  the  fertility  of  the  country  to  stop  there. 
This  we  infer  from  the  fact  that  the  language  of  the 
earliest  monuments  of  Egypt  is  so  different  from  the 
Semitic.  The  Hamitic  Egyptians  must  have  come  into 
the  Nile  valley  and  developed  their  civilization  long  after 
the  Semites  had  passed  on  to  Arabia.2  It  is  hardly  prob- 
able that  at  that  remote  period  Arabia  was  a  less  deso- 
late country  than  now.  Wallace  believed  that  the  large 
treeless  tracts  of  desert  in  Eastern  Africa  and  Western  Asia 
were  once  covered  with  aboriginal  forests,  which  were 
destroyed  by  the  abundance  of  camels  and  goats, — animals 
which  are  exceedingly  destructive  of  a  woody  vegetation, 
—  and  that  the  loss  became  permanent  on  account  of  the 
absence  of  irrigation.3  If  Arabia  was  ever  covered  with 

entered  this  region  after  the  Hamites  of  East  Africa  had  gone  thither, 
or  their  country  may  have  been  too  poor  to  attract  the  Hamites,  so  that 
they  passed  them  by.  As  Erman  confesses,  this  is  the  real  explanation. 

1  See  below,  ch.  iv. 

2  Of  course  it  is  not  impossible,  as  Erman  (Sitzungsberichte  der  Ak. 
d.  Wiss.  zu  Berlin,  1900,  p.  351  ff.)  and  Wiedemann  (in  de  Morgan's 
Hecherches  sur  les  Origines  de  VEgypte,  Vol.  II,  pp.  219-228)  believe, 
that  a  later  wave  of  Semitic  migration  from  Arabia  may  have  formed 
one  element  in  the  formation  of  the  old  Egyptian  civilization.    It  was 
probably  not  an  important  element.     Cf.  Sergi,  Mediterranean  Race, 
pp.  90-100. 

8  Geographical  Distribution  of  Animals,  Vol.  I,  p.  200. 


THE  CRADLE  OF  THE  SEMITES  27 

forests,  it  must  have  been  many  thousands  of  years  ago ; 
and  it  is  unlikely  that  the  Semitic  migration  can  be  placed 
far  enough  back  so  that  such  an  inducement  can  be  thought 
to  have  led  its  hordes  hither.  As  our  investigation  pro- 
ceeds, however,  the  reasons  which  led  to  this  migration 
will  become  clear.1 

How  long  ago  the  Semites  entered  Arabia  we  can  now 
only  guess.  It  must  have  been,  as  we  have  already  noted, 
after  the  main  skeleton  of  Hamito-Semitic  verbal  forma- 
tion was  formed  and  several  of  their  numerals  developed. 
On  the  other  hand,  it  must  have  been  some  considerable 
time  since  the  change  in  the  contour  of  the  continents 
had  separated  those  members  of  the  Mediterranean  race 
resident  in  Europe  from  those  resident  in  Africa.  We 
infer  this  because,  while  the  Berbers  are  connected  with 
the  other  Hamitic  races  in  language,  there  is  no  linguistic 
connection  between  them  and  any  member  of  the  Mediter- 
ranean race  resident  in  Europe,  either  in  ancient  or  modern 
times,  except  those  Arabs  and  Berbers  who  migrated  into 
Spain  in  the  early  days  of  Islam.  Eighty  thousand  years 
ago  (or  should  we  say  240, 000  ?2)  no  fixed  language 
(i.e.  a  language  sufficiently  fixed  to  survive)  had  been 
developed  by  these  Mediterranean  peoples.  All  this 
might  be  true,  and  yet  the  two  great  families  of  Hamito- 
Semitic  speech  might  have  been  outlined  as  much  as  they 
were  when  the  Semites  branched  off,  if  that  event  be 
placed  at  20,000,  30,000,  or  even  50,000  years  ago.  Any 
one  of  these  periods  would  be  sufficiently  long,  so  that 
Arabia  may  have  been  a  more  fertile  country  then  than 
now,  and  so  that  its  present  conditions  may  afterward 
have  supervened,  and  still  have  occurred  long  enough  ago 
to  allow  them  thousands  of  years  in  which  to  indelibly 
impress  on  the  Semite  his  social  organization  and  religion. 
We  shall,  however,  see  in  the  next  chapter  some  reason 
for  holding  that  the  conditions  of  Arabia  were  what  they 
are  now  when  the  Semites  entered  the  country. 

1  See  below,  ch.  iii.  a  See  above,  p.  19. 


28  SEMITIC  ORIGINS 


However  long  ago  this  migration  may  have  occurred,  — 
and  any  statement  in  years  is  a  mere  guess,  —  the  peculiar 
conditions  of  life  which  the  Arabian  deserts  and  oases 
have  presented  for  millenniums  are  the  matrix  in  which 
Semitic  character,  as  it  is  known  to  us,  was  born.  It  is 
a  land  of  barren  and  volcanic  mountains,1  of  broad  stretches 
of  dry,  waste,  unproductive  soil,2  and  wide  areas  of  shift- 
ing sand,  interrupted  by  an  occasional  oasis,  —  a  land 
where,  for  the  most  part,  water  is  difficult  to  obtain,  where 
famine  is  always  imminent,  where  hunger,  thirst,  heat, 
and  exposure  are  the  constant  experience  of  the  inhabi- 
tants. The  Bedawi  are  always  underfed,  they  suffer 
constantly  from  hunger  and  thirst,  and  their  bodies  thus 
weakened  fall  an  easy  prey  to  disease ; 3  they  range  the 
silent  desert,  almost  devoid  of  life,  where  the  sun  is  all 
powerful  by  day  and  the  stars  exceedingly  brilliant  by 
night.  This  environment  begets  in  them  intensity  of 
faith  of  a  certain  kind,  ferocity,  exclusiveness,  and 
imagination.  These  are  all  Semitic  characteristics  wher- 
ever we  find  the  Semites ;  and  there  can  be  little  doubt 
but  that  this  is  the  land  in  which  these  traits  were  in- 
grained in  the  race.  Here,  too,  the  Arabic  language,  pre- 
served in  its  purity  by  the  barriers  which  nature  interposed 
against  foreign  influences,  though  it  is  by  no  means  iden- 
tical with  the  primitive  Semitic  language,  has  preserved 
more  characteristics  of  that  primitive  speech  than  any 
other  Semitic  tongue.4 

We  conclude,  then,  that  we  must  hold  to  the  Arabic 
origin  of  the  Semites.  Taking  Arabia  as  the  Semitic 
cradle  land,  the  course  of  distribution  of  the  Semitic 
nations  over  the  lands  occupied  by  them  during  the  his- 

1  Cf.  Doughty's  Travels  in  Arabia  Deserta,  Vol.  I,  chs.  xiii-xvi. 

2  Cf.  Doughty,  op.  cit.,  Vol.  I,  p.  56. 

*  See  the  books  on  Arabian  travel  generally;  e.g.  Doughty,  op.  cit., 
Vol.  I,  p.  244. 

*  Cf.  Schrader  in  ZDMG.,  Vol.  XXVII,  p.  417  ;  Wright,  Comparative 
Grammar  of  the  Semitic  Languages,  p.  8 ;  and  Vlock  in  Hebraica,  Vol. 
II,  p.  149. 


THE   CRADLE   OF  THE   SEMITES  29 

torical  period  would  be  that  described  by  Schrader l  and 
Wright 2  on  the  basis  of  the  relative  divergence  of  the  lan- 
guages from  the  primitive  type.  The  northern  Semites 
—  the  Babylonians,  Aramaeans,  and  Canaanites  —  first 
parted  from  their  brethren  in  the  south  and  settled  in 
Babylonia  and  the  neighboring  regions,  where  they  lived 
together  for  a  long  period.  The  Aramaeans  were  the  first 
to  separate  from  the  main  body  of  emigrants ;  at  a  consid- 
erably later  period  the  Canaanites,  and,  last  of  all,  the 
Assyrians.  At  the  same  time  an  emigration  went  on  in 
a  southern  direction.  Parting  from  the  main  body  in 
central  Arabia,  these  emigrants  settled  on  or  near  the 
southern  coast  of  the  peninsula,  whence  a  band  of  them 
subsequently  crossed  into  Africa  and  pitched  in  Abyssinia. 
These  movements  must  each  be  considered  as  processes 
going  on  for  a  considerable  period,3  and,  in  some  cases,  as 
in  Mesopotamia  and  Palestine,  subject  to  a  considerable 
mixture  not  only  of  foreigners,  but  from  Arabia  directly. 

1  ZDMG.,  Vol.  XXVII,  p.  421  S. 

2  Op.  cit.t  p.  9. 

*  Cf.  Robertson  Smith's  Kinship  and   Marriage  in  Early  Arabia, 
Cambridge,  1885,  p.  244. 


CHAPTER  II 

PRIMITIVE   SEMITIC   SOCIAL  LIFE 

IN  primitive  life  the  form  of  the  clan  depends  upon 
economic  conditions.  My  friend  and  colleague,  Professor 
L.  M.  Keasbey,  who  is  engaged  upon  a  work  on  the  eco- 
nomic origins  of  society,  would  sketch  some  of  the  differ- 
ences as  follows:  In  protected  spots  where  the  beginnings 
of  agriculture  or  arboriculture  are  possible,  communities 
are  formed  of  women  and  the  weaker  men.  The  stronger 
men  are  drawn  away  by  more  hazardous  enterprises. 
Polyandry  of  the  Nair  type  may  prevail,  and  descent 
will  be  reckoned  in  the  female  line.  This  gives  us  the 


il 


^Where  men  organize  for  hazardous  enterprises,  such  as 
conquest,  conducting  a  caravan,  or  hunting  the  buffalo, 
the  "republican  clan"  is  formed.  The  success  of  the 
enterprise  requires  the  most  skilful  leader,  who  must, 
accordingly,  be  chosen  for  his  personal  qualities.  A  few 
hardy  women  are  taken  into  these  clans,  and  polyandry 
of  the  Thibetan  type,  or  communal  marriage,  may  result. 
Descent  is  here  counted  through  the  father. 

Where  pastoral  life  is  possible,  the  care  of  the  flocks 
leads  to  the  formation  of  the  "  patriarchal  clan. "  In  this 
polygamy  may  prevail,  and  descent  is  reckoned  through 
the  father. 

The  late  W.  Robertson  Smith,  in  beginning  his  discus- 
sion of  the  relations  of  gods  and  men  in  the  oldest  Semitic 
communities,  takes  the  clan  as  the  earliest  social  unit.1 
For  historical  times  this  view  is  amply  justified  by  the 

1  The  Religion  of  the  Semites,  2d  ed.,  London,  1894,  p.  35. 
30 


PRIMITIVE   SEMITIC   SOCIAL  LIFE  31 

evidence,  and  there  is  much  reason  to  believe,  as  we  shall 
see,  that  it  extended  far  back  into  prehistoric  times.     In  i 
Babylon  it  is  true  that  at  the  very  dawn  of  history  citiesjj 
had  superseded,   at  least   in   form,    the   communal  clan) 
organization ;  but  this  was  due  to  the  fact  that  the  rich  I 
soil  and  abundant  water  of  the  Tigris-Euphrates  valley 
made  agriculture  easy,  and  paved  the  way  for  a  civilization 
which  gradually  outgrew  the  tribal  stage.     Whether  the 
Semites  originated  this  civilization  or  borrowed  it,  has  no 
bearing  on  the  fact  that  they  were  influenced  by  it.     In 
the  earliest  times,  however,  the  town  life  did  not  materi- 
ally modify  the  communal  clan  life.     Cities,  whether  jn 
Babylon ia_^jpr  in  Palestine^  were  at  first  simply  fortified 
dweTTIngs  of  clansmen. 

Through  many  sources  clan  organization  may  be  traced 
in  the  other  parts  of  the  Semitic  domain.  Thus,  in  the 
genealogical  lists  of  the  Old  Testament,  we  can  trace,  as  ( 
scholars  now  generally  recognize,  the  clans  of  which  the 
Israelitish  tribes  were  composed,  since  the  writers,  in 
accordance  with  the  patriarchal  ideas  of  their  own  times, 
have  personified  the  nation  as  a  man,  tribes  as  his  sons, 
and  clans  as  his  grandsons  or  descendants.  Sometimes 
these  clans  can,  with  probability,  be  traced  in  extra- 
Biblical  sources,  as  Heber  and  Malkiel,  clans  of  the  tribe 
of  Asher,  in  the  El-Amarna  tablets;3  but  whether  they 
can  be  so  traced  or  not,  there  is  no  doubt  but  that  the 
names  represent  clans.  Clans  not  mentioned  in  the  Bible, 
which  once  dwelt  in  Syria  and  Palestine,  are  also  men- 
tioned in  the  El-Amarna  correspondence,  such  as  the  "  Sons 

1  Cf.  Winckler's  Altorientalische  Forschungen,  1st  ser.,  p.  232  ff. 

2  See  the  remarks  of  Robertson  Smith  in  the  Journal  of  Philology, 
Vol.  IX,  p.  92. 

8  They  appear  in  several  letters  as  Habiri  and  Malki-ilu.  For  the 
Hebrew  names  cf.  Gen.  4617,  Nu.  2045,  1  Chron.  781.  For  the  cuneiform 
references,  cf.  Schrader's  KB.,  Vol.  V,  pp.  302-313.  On  the  identification, 
cf.  Jastrow,  in  JBL.,  Vol.  XI,  pp.  119-122.  Reisner  (JBL.,  Vol.  XVI, 
pp.  143-145),  following  Hale"vy,  makes  them  Cassites,  but  this  does  not 
seem  to  me  so  probable. 


32  SEMITIC  ORIGINS 


of  Ebed-Ashera,"1 "  Sons  of  Labapa,"2  " Sons  of  Arzawa,"3 
etc.  These  letters  give  us  a  picture  of  a  seething  mass  of 
clans,  each  struggling  for  the  supremacy  of  Palestine. 

Such  lists  as  that  of  Gen.  36  attest  the  same  organ- 
ization for  ancient  Edom.  The  clan  organization  of  the 
whole  of  Arabia  is  attested  in  many  ways.  One  evidence 
of  it  is  the  list  of  names  in  Gen.  2512ff-,  while  proof, 
if  possible  of  a  still  more  convincing  character,  is  found 
in  the  Aramaic  inscriptions  brought  from  Hegra  and 
vicinity.4  Claudius  Ptolemy,  in  his  "Geography,"  in 
describing  Arabia,  gives  a  long  list  of  nations  which 
must,  as  Robertson  Smith  pointed  out,  have  been  clans  in 
an  easy  state  of  flux,  for  by  the  time  of  Mohammed  their 
names  had  all  disappeared.5  The  existence  of  clans  for 
this  region  is  also  attested  by  the  Sabaean  inscriptions, 
which  have  in  recent  years  been  recovered.6 

Wherever  in  the  dawn  of  history  we  can  catch  glimpses 
of  the  Semites  before  the  life  of  the  cities  had  obliterated 
more  primitive  traits,  the  claoJ^-^be  unit  of  organization. 

In  Arabia,  where,  to  the  present  time,  the  physical  con- 
ditions make  a  high  degree  of  civilization  impossible  for 
a  large  portion  of  the  inhabitants,  the  same  social  organiza- 
tion prevails.  While  the  tribe  has  become  the  larger 
unit  of  organization  in  the  community,  the  conditions  of 
existence  are  such  that  clans,  often  exceedingly  small, 
live,  move,  and  act  together  under  the  guidance  of  their 
own  sheik,  who  holds  a  position  of  somewhat  ill-defined 
subordination  to  the  sheik  of  the  tribe.7  This  organiza- 
tion is  so  ingrained  into  the  constitution  of  Arabic  life, 

1  KB.,  Vol.  V,  pp.  154,   155,  e.g.     Perhaps  afterward  the  tribe  of 
Asher.     See  Chapter  VI. 

2  Ibid.,  pp.  306,  307,  and  310-311. 
8  Ibid.,  pp.  310-311. 

*  See  CIS.,  Ft.  II,  Vol.  I,  Nos.  197,  198,  209,  215,  and  221. 

6  See  his  Kinship,  etc.,  p.  239. 

•  Cf.  CIS.,  Pt.  IV,  Vol.  I,  Nos.  2",  292'«  (emended  text),  40",  41*,  etc. 

7  Cf.  Doughty's  Arabia  Deserta,  Vol.  I,  pp.  136,  251,  and  chs.  ix-xii 
and  xiv-xvi,  passim. 


PRIMITIVE   SEMITIC  SOCIAL  LIFE  38 


that  it  fa"»  unTyjyyd  thA  inflmmnftg  pf  T«1a.m1 


and  of  exposure  to  civilization,  and  still  appears  wherever 
Arabs  are  found  to-day.     ClanT  organization  exists,  or  has  L 
existed  in  all  parts  of  the  world,  and  is  recognized  byN 
sociologists  as  the  simplest  and  earliest  form  of  social'} 
integration.1    We  may  assume,  therefore,  that  it  existed 
among    the    primitive    Semites   in   their    united   home. 
Indeed,  if  Keasbey  is  right  in  his  estimate  of  the  forces 
which  have  made  man  social,2  Arabia  never  could  have 
supported  a  population  of  any  size  without  it.     A  semi-/ 
agricultural  cultivation  of  the  palm  in  the  oases  was,  asU 
will  be  shown  below,  the  chief  food  supply  of  the  Arabs  n 
almost,  if  not  quite,  from  the  time  of  their  settlement  in 
the  peninsula.    No  company  of  men  could  gain  possession 
of  an  oasis  and  hold  it  for  cultivation  without  organiza- 
tion for  defence.     Such  an  oasis  would  not  support  them 
the  year  around  ;  they  must  either  hunt  or  keep  flocks  and 
herds.    In  Arabia,  as  will  be  pointed  out  below,  there  was 
little  hunting.     If  flocks  and  herds  were  kept,  they  must 
be  led  forth  to  pasture.     While  some  were  cultivating  the 
oasis,  others  must  take  the  more  dangerous  part  of  leading 
the  flocks  and  herds   out  to  graze.      This    latter   task 
would  naturally  fall  on  the  younger  and  more  hardy  men. 
Keasbey  has  shown  that  it  was  under  such  conditions  that 
clans,  or  artificial  brotherhoods,  were  formed.3     We  have 
present,  therefore,  in  Arabia  from  the  start  those  economic 

fllfl"  ia  foyoed  foto  existence,  and 


may  rest  assured  that  we  are  treading  on  firm  ground  when 
we  assert  that  the  clan  organization  was  a  part  of  primitive 
Semitic  life. 

Giddings  4  regards  the  clan  as  having  for  its  nucleus  an 
actual  group  of  brothers  and  sisters,  who  form  a  totemic 

1  See,  e.g.  Giddings's  Principles  of  Sociology,  p.  268  ft 
a  See  his  article,  "The  Institution  of  Society  "in  the  International 
Monthly,  Vol.  I,  pp.  355-398. 
8  Ibid.,  pp.  385-398. 
*  Principles  of  Sociology,  pp.  270-272. 
D 


84  SEMITIC  ORIGINS 


kindred  and  constitute  a  household ;  Keasbey,1  as  a  brother- 
hood, artificial  in  organization,  though  not  necessarily  of 
different  stocks,  who  have  selected  the  totem  as  a  kind  of 

i  Shibboleth.  Whatever  the  beginning  of  such  a  brother- 
i*  I  hood,  its  development  is  admirably  sketched  by  Giddings.2 
It  forms  at  first  an  economic  group,  who  aid  one  another 
in  obtaining  food  and  redressing  wrongs.  The  kinship  of 

v  such  families  is  usually,  among  savages,  reckoned  through 
the  mother  and  not  through  the  father.  At  a  time  too 
remote  for  us  to  detect  the  origin  of  the  practice,  says 
Giddings,  natural  brotherhoods  are,  by  expulsion  and 
adoption,  arising  doubtless  from  economic  causes,  con- 
verted into  artificial  fraternities;  according  to  Keasbey 
they  were  such  from  the  first.  These  brotherhoods  ac- 
quire, in  the  animistic  stage  of  culture,  a  peculiar  sanc- 
tity through  the  belief  that  men  are  akin  to  supernatural 

j  beings.      The  belief  that  the  individual  is  akin  to  his 

I  totem  reacts  on  his  conception  of  human  relationship; 
and  in  time,  though  the  members  of  a  family  may  have 
individual  totems,  the  household  regards  itself  as  a  unit, 
and  comes  to  have  its  collective  totem  in  addition  to  these. 
Adoption,  then,  becomes  a  more  sacred  ceremony ;  exogamy, 
if  practised  before  for  other  reasons,  now  becomes  a  reli- 
gious obligation,  since  it  is  sanctified  by  the  totem ;  thus, 
all  the  practices  of  the  fraternal  group  assume  a  more  ob- 
ligatory character.  From  time  to  time,  the  members  of 
such  a  household  would  encounter  others  who  had  acci- 
dentally hit  upon  the  same  totem.  These,  they  reason, 
must  be  their  brothers  and  sisters,  since  they  are  kindred 
to  the  same  totem  as  themselves.  Thus,  the  brotherhood, 
with  all  its  privileges,  rules  of  marriage,  and  obligations 
for  mutual  protection,  is  enlarged.  In  a  generation  or 
two  there  exists  in  such  a  group  all  varying  degrees  of 
kinship,  and  the  totemic  clan  is  complete. 

These  descriptions  of  the  genesis  of  the  clan  in  general 
may  be  taken  as  a  tolerably  accurate  description  of  the 

1  Op.  cit.,  p.  393  if.  2  Op.  cit.,  pp.  270-272. 


PRIMITIVE   SEMITIC   SOCIAL  LIFE  Sft 

Semitic  clan.  The  proof  of  this  on  the  social  and  eco- 
nomic side  will  appear  as  we  proceed.  We  may  note  now, 
however,  some  of  the  proofs  of  Sflfflltfe  tfftflP1^"1-  These 
have  been  more  fully  presented  by  the  late  Robertson 
Smith  than  by  any  other  writer.1  He  regards  the  proof  of 
totemism  complete  when  we  find:  (1)  "Stocks  named  after 
plants  and  animals ;  (2)  the  prevalence  of  the  conception 
that  the  members  of  the  stock  are  of  the  blood  of  the 
eponym  animal,  or  are  sprung  from  a  plant  of  the  species 
chosen  as  totem;  (3)  the  ascription  to  the  totem  of  a 
sacred  character,  which  may  result  in  its  being  regarded 
as  the  god  of  a  stock,  but  at  any  rate  makes  it  to  be  re- 
garded with  veneration,  so  that,  for  example,  a  totem 
animal  is  not  used  for  ordinary  food."2  Taking  these  as 
guides,  Smith  found  many  Arabic  tribes  bearing  the  names 
of  animals  as  stock  names,3  and  many  traces  in  the  Old 
Testament  of  the  same  thing.4  These  names  form  a  strik- 
ing and  impressive  list,  and  form,  with  the  names  derived 
from  gods,  a  large  proportion  of  Arabic  personal  and  stock 
names.6  He  also  found  that  many  Arabs  believed  them- 
selves to  be  descended  from  such  animals  as  the  fox,  wolf, 
and  hyena,  and  that  some  of  them  bewailed  a  dead  gazelle 
as  a  relative.6  The  third  link  in  the  proof  is  nearly  want- 
ing because  of  the  veil  which  Mohammedan  sources  draw 
as  far  as  they  can  over  the  old  heathenism.  The  nearest 
approach  to  it  which  he  found  in  Arabia  was  the  existence 
of  two  or  three  gods  in  animal  form.  Thus,  Yaguth,  the 
lion-god,  was  worshipped  in  the  time  of  the  prophet  by 

1  In  an  article  in  the  Journal  of  Philology,  Vol.  IX,  entitled  "  Animal 
Worship  and  Animal  Tribes  among  the  Arabs  and  in  the  Old  Testament," 
and   in   his   Kinship  and  Marriage  in  Early  Arabia,  ch.  vii.    He  has 
been  followed  by  Jacobs  in  his  Studies  in  Biblical  Archaeology,  London, 
1894. 

2  Kinship,  p.  188. 

8  Journal  of  Philology,  Vol.  IX,  pp.  79-88,  and  Kinship,  pp.  192-201. 

•  Journal  of  Philology,  Vol.  IX,  pp.  89-100. 

•  Cf.  Smith's  Kinship,  p.  202. 

•  Ibid.,  pp.  203-205. 


36  SEMITIC  ORIGINS 


several  different  tribes.      Ya'uq,  according  to  commen- 
tators, was  an  idol  in  the  form  of  a  horse,  while  Nasr  was 
said  to  have  the  figure  of  a  vulture.1    This  is  as  near  as  we 
can  come  to  direct  proof.     As  Smith  pointed  out,  there  is 
I  some  indirect  proof  in  the  fact  that  the  jinn,  who  are  said 
1  in  the  Qur'an  (6100)  to  have  been  partners  with  God,  and 
'  therefore   probably  old  deities   degraded,    are   generally 
conceived  in  monstrous  and  hairy  forms.2 

Among  the  Hebrews  the  survivals  of  totemism  do  not 
form  so  complete  a  chain  of  proof  for  its  existence,  but 
there  are  a  number  of  sporadic  traces  of  it  in  the  Old 
Testament  which  confirm  the  argument  drawn  from  the 
Arabic  material.  There  are  a  number  of  animal  names, 

>like  Leah,  Rachel,  and  Caleb,  which  were  borne  by  reputed 
ancestors  of  clans ;  and  in  Ezekiel  (810)  and  Isaiah  (6617) 
we  have  traces  of  an  old  animal  worship  revived  in  times 
of  distress,  which  seems  to  be  a  survival  of  totemistic 
deities.3 

The  Old  Testament  affords  some  evidence  that  similar 
conceptions  were  entertained  by  neighboring  Semitic 
tribes.  Thus  Oreb  and  Zeeb  (the  Raven  and  the  Wolf) 
are,  in  Judges  (T25),  the  names  of  Midianitish  chieftains. 
So  Epher  (the  fawn  or  calf  of  the  wild  cow)  is  a  Midian- 
ite,  Judsean,  and  Manassite  clan.4  Many  others  might  be 
cited  if  space  permitted  the  reproduction  of  the  investiga- 
tions on  this  subject.6  Although  the  proof  from  the  Old 
Testament  is  not  so  complete  as  from  Arabia,  yet  two  out 
of  the  three  necessary  classes  of  evidence  are  found. 

1  Cf.  Kinship,  pp.  208,  209,  and  Wellhausen's  Eeste  arabische  Heiden- 
tums,  2d  ed.,  Berlin,  1897,  pp.  19-23. 

8  Kinship,  p.  211. 

»  Cf.  Smith's  Religion  of  the  Semites,  2d  ed.,  p.  357,  Cheyne's  "  Isaiah," 
in  Haupt's  SBOT.,  p.  200,  n.  5,  and  Toy's  "Ezekiel,"  in  SBOT.,  p.  110,  n.  7. 

*  Cf.  Gen.  254,  1  Chron.  417,  S24,  and  Robertson  Smith  in  the  Journal 
of  Philology,  Vol.  IX,  p.  91.  See  also  Gesenius,  Handworterbuch,  13th  ed., 
Leipzig,  1899,  which  follows  Smith. 

6  Cf.,  in  addition  to  Smith  and  Wellhausen,  the  list  in  Jacobs's  Studies 
in  Biblical  Archaeology. 


PRIMITIVE   SEMITIC   SOCIAL  LIFE  37 

In  other  Semitic  countries  occasional  sporadic  traces 
are  found  which  point  in  the  same  direction.  Thus, 
among  the  Guti  or  Suti,  a  tribe  on  the  east  of  Babylonia, 
the  goddess  Ishtar  was  represented  in  the  form  of  a  lion 
or  riding  on  a  lion.1  In  the  Gilgamish  epic,  which,  as 
we  now  have  it,  centres  in  the  city  of  Erech  in  southern 
Babylonia,  Ishtar  marries  now  a  bird,  now  a  lion,  now  a 
horse,  and  tries  to  marry  a  man,2  —  facts  which  point  to  a 
totemistic  circle  of  ideas.  At  Eryx,  in  Sicily,  Ashtart 
was  thought  to  have  the  form  of  a  dove,3  and  at  Tyre,  the 
head  of  a  bull.*  It  is  to  such  a  conception  that  the  book 
of  Tobit  (I5)  alludes  when  it  tells  how  people  sacrificed 
to  "She-Baal,  the  cow."8  In  the  same  class  of  evidence 
we  should  probably  put  the  calves  at  Bethel  and  Danj 
which  were  said  to  be  images  of  Yahwe  (1  Kgs.  I 
1228). 

These  reasons,  slight  as  they  may  seem,  come  from 
widely  different  parts  of  the  Semitic  territory,  and  are,  for 
that  reason,  significant.  Sporadic  traces  of  totemism  so 
widely  scattered  can  only  be  explained  by  supposing  that 
thejjrimitive  clans in  their  ojd  Arabian  home  were  totem- 
istic. Indeed,  it  is  possible  that  this  stage  had  been 
reached  before  the  Hamites  separated  from  them,  for  the 
well-known  animal  worship  of  the  Egyptian  nomes,  in 
which  each  nome  worshipped  a  different  animal,  is  posi- 
tive proof  of  the  existence  of  totemism  among  that  people.6 

1  Cf.  Hebraica,  Vol.  X,  pp.  26,  27.     This  and  other  evidence  of  a  simi- 
lar character  was  collected  in  my  "  Semitic  Ishtar  Cult,"  published  in 
Vols.  IX  and  X  of  Hebraica. 

2  Cf.  Hebraica,  Vol.  X,  p.  5,  and  Jastrow's  Eeligion  of  Babylonia  and 
Assyria,  Boston,  1898,  p.  482. 

8  Cf.  JElian,  De  Natura  Anamalium,  IV,  also  Hebraica,  Vol.  X,  p.  49. 

4  Cf.  the  extracts  from  Philo  of  Biblos,  published  by  Orelli  as  Sancho- 
niathonis  Fragmenta,  p.  30,  really  taken  from  the  Prcep.  Evang.  of 
Eusebius,  Bk.  I,  10, 31,  Josephus's  Antiquities,  8,  5,  3,  Against  Apion, 
1, 18,  also  Hebraica,  Vol.  X,  p.  31. 

6  Tfl  Bc£a\  TV  Sand\ei. 

6  The  attempt  of  Robert  Brown,  Jun.,  Semitic  Influence  in  Hellenic 
Mythology,  Williams  &  Norgate,  London,  1898,  p.  56  ff.,  to  prove  that 


38 


SEMITIC  ORIGINS 


The  early  culture  of  Egypt  embalmed  this  system  for  our 
study  as  the  amber  of  the  Baltic  sometimes  embalms  a  fly; 
and  the  fact  that  the  totemic  system  of  thought  appears 
both  among  the  Semites  and  the  Hamites  makes  it  pos- 
sible that  bejore  the  separation  of  the  two  branches  of  the 
Hamito-Semitic  race  the  totemic  clan  had  already  been 
developed.  This  possibility  will  again  confront  us  at  a 
later  point;  but  however  it  may  be  determined,  we  are 
justified  in  holding  that  the  totemic  clan  was  the  primitive 
Semitic  social  organization. 

The  economic  purpose  for  which  the  clan  organization 
was  formed  by  the  primitive  Semitic  folk  was  the  defence 
of  their  date-growing  oases  and  their  domestic  animals 
in  their  pasture  lands,  or  for  the  attack  of  similar  pos- 
sessions of  their  neighbors.  In  a  country  where  the  con- 
ditions of  life  are  as  hard  as  they  are  in  Arabia,  the 
population  has  again  and  again,  far  back  into  prehistoric 
times,  become  too  numerous  to  be  supported  by  the  sterile 
soil.  Some  who  were  pushed  away  from  the  oases  or 
better  pasture  lands  were  compelled  to  plunder  others  for 
a  living,  until  at  last  the  pressure  from  within  forced  a 
wave  of  emigration  through  some  convenient  channel  into 
another  territory.  These  conditions  down  to  the  present 
time  force  many  Arabs  to  become  robbers,  and  make  bands 
armed  for  plunder  the  terror  and  often  the  destruction  of 

totemism  never  existed  in  Egypt,  (1)  because  no  real  Egyptologist  believes 
it;,  and  (2)  because  Strabo  (XVII,  40)  says  that  all  worshipped  the  ox, 
cat,  hawk,  and  ibis,  is  a  signal  failure.  Were  it  true  that  no  Egyptologist 
believes  totemism  to  have  existed  in  Egypt,  it  would  only  prove  that 
Egyptologists  allow  themselves  a  narrow  range  of  studies,  so  that  the 
facts  of  anthropology  escape  them.  It  is  doubtful  whether  this  charge 
can  justly  be  brought  against  them.  Cf.  e.g.  Maspero's  Etudes  de 
Mythologie  d1  Archeologie  Egyptienne,  Paris,  1893,  Vol.  II,  p.  277. 
Maspero's  statement  that  their  myths  are  of  the  same  sort  as  those 
of  the  savages  of  the  old  and  new  world,  is  very  like  a  confession 
of  a  belief  in  totemism.  Strabo  was  a  late  writer,  and,  by  his  time, 
political  unity  had  created  syncretism  so  that  the  gods  of  some  locali- 
ties had  obtained  universal  recognition ;  accordingly  his  statement 
proves  nothing. 


PRIMITIVE    SEMITIC  SOCIAL  LIFE  89 

the  nomad's  life,1  and  must  have  operated  among  the 
primitive  Semites  much  as  they  do  to-day.  Thus,  then 
as  now,  clans  must  exist  for  mutual  protection.  Some  of 
these  would  settle  on  an  oasis,  and  their  older  and  weaker 
men  would  aid  the  women  in  cultivating  the  date-palm, 
while  the  more  hardy  of  the  men  led  the  small  flocks  and 
herds  out  into  the  neighboring  pasture  lands.2  Those 
who  were  so  unfortunate  as  to  obtain  no  oasis  would  wan- 
der up  and  down  with  their  flocks  and  herds  seeking 
pasturage  and  plunder  as  opportunity  offered. 

In  theory,  such  economic  conditions  should  produce  all 
three  classes  of  clans :  the  communal,  for  the  cultivation 
of  the  oases ;  the  republican,  for  defence  and  for  caravan 
trade;  and  the  pastoral,  for  the  part  of  the  population 
which  could  obtain  no  oasis.  All  these  types  were,  as  we 
shall  see,  in  time  produced,  but  the  dependence  of  all 
classes  on  the  oases  would,  in  Arabia,  long  hold  the  for- 
mation of  the  republican  and  patriarchal  type  of  clan  in 
check,  and  enable  the  communistic  clan  to  exert  such  an 
influence  as  to  leave  its  stamp  upon  the  organization  of 
society.  Indeed,  it  is  probable  that  for  unnumbered  cen- 
turies the  clans  which  were  deprived  of  the  privileges  of 
oases  found  life  so  hard  that  the  conquest  of  other  coun- 
tries became  for  them  a  necessity,  even  before  the  repub- 
lican or  patriarchal  type  had  become  fully  fixed.  These 
facts  will  come  out  more  fully  as  we  proceed. 

When  we  go  a  step  farther  back  and  seek  to  determine 
the  cpjisJyjj3^iflfrjD£^lML£Qndifo|^^6nuii|^JjuQi}y,  we  are 
met  by  greater  difficulties.  Those  who  have  labored  in 
this  field  hitherto  have  worked  with  the  sociological 
theory  of  McLennan,8  who  held  that  in  the  primitive  con- 

1  Cf.  Doughty's  Arabia  Deserta,  Vol.  I,  pp.  345,  489,  505,  etc.;  also 
Sale's  The  Koran,  p.  24. 

» Cf.  Payne's  History  of  the  New  World  called  America,  Vol.  II, 
p.  7  ft.,  and  Keasbey,  in  the  International  Monthly,  Vol.  I,  p.  390  ff.,  for 
analogous  examples. 

•  Cf.  G.  A.  Wilken's  Het  Matriarchaat  bij  de  Oude  Arabieren,  Am- 
sterdam, 1884 ;  W.  R.  Smith's  Kinship  and  Marriage  in  Early  Arabia, 


40  SEMITIC  OKIGINS 


dition  of  man  the  relation  of  the  sexes  to  one  another  was 
one  of  unrestrained  promiscuous  intercourse;  that  this 
was  succeeded  by  a  state  of  polyandry,  and  this,  in  turn, 
by  the  practice  of  polygamy,  out  of  which  monogamic 
marriage  has  grown.1  This  view  presupposed  that  in  the 
development  of  society  the  relation  between  the  sexes  had 
everywhere  advanced  according  to  one  general  law.  In 
the  polyandrous  state  of  society  it  was  found  that  kinship 
was  reckoned  through  the  mother,  and  it  was  inferred  that 
woman,  and  not  man,  was  the  head  of  the  clan.  Thus,  it 
was  supposed  that  a  matriarchate  everywhere  preceded 
a  patriarchate,  and  that  in  the  evolution  of  society  the 
relative  position  of  the  sexes  has  been  reversed. 

More  recent  investigators  of  social  problems  are,  how- 
ever, unanimous  in  the  opinion  that  polyandry  is  not  a 
social  condition  through  which  all  mankind  has  passed, 
but  a  phenomenon  of  social  evolution  which,  under  very 
special  conditions,  has  appeared  among  a  few  races  only.2 
The  evidence  on  the  matter  seems  overwhelmingly  in 
favor  of  the  latter  view.  It  cannot,  however,  be  repro- 
duced here,  but  must,  to  be  appreciated,  be  studied  in  the 
works  of  special  students  of  the  subject.3  It  appears, 
therefore,  that  the  real  matriarchate  is  comparatively  rare. 
Among  a  few  peoples,  like  the  Nairs  of  the  Malabar  coast,  it 
seems  really  to  exist,4  and  in  such  families  as  those  of  the 

Cambridge,  1885;  and  an  article  of  the  writer's,  "The  Kinship  of  Gods 
and  Men  among  the  Early  Semites,"  in  the  JBL.,  Vol.  XV,  p. 
168  ff. 

1  See,  e.g.,  McLennan's  Studies  in  Ancient  History,  Macmillan  &  Co., 
1886,  ch.  viii. 

2  See  Spencer's  Principles  of  Sociology,  Vol.  I,  p.  660  (Am.  ed.,  New 
York,  1897)  ;  Starcke's  Primitive  Family,  New  York,  1889,  p.  139  ff. ; 
Letourneau's  The  Evolution  of  Marriage  and  the  Family,  New  York, 
p.    320  ff. ;    Westermarck's    The  History   of  Human  Marriage,   Mac- 
millan &  Co.,   1891,  pp.  459  and  505-508;    Lubbock's    The    Origin  of 
Civilization  and  the  Primitive  Condition  of  Man,  5th  ed.,  New  York, 
1892,  p.  143  ff.;  and  Giddings's  Principles  of  Sociology,  pp.  155  and  276. 

8  Ibid. 

*  Cf.  Reclus's  Primitive  Folk,  New  York,  1891,  p.  165. 


PRIMITIVE   SEMITIC   SOCIAL  LITE  41 

Andaman  islanders :  it  would  be  the  natural  outcome  of 
the  unorganized  condition  of  society.  It  frequently  hap- 
pens where  polyandry  is  practised  that  the  brother  of  the 
mother  is  the  head  of  the  family,  and  rears  his  sister's 
children,  so  that  there  is  an  avunculate  rather  than  a 
matriarchate. 

The  late  W.  Robertson  Smith,  the  great  investigator  of 
this  phase  of  Semitic  life,  in  whose  tracks  others  of  us 
have  followed  at  a  distance,  and  "non  passibus  sequis," 
based  his  investigations  on  the  theory  of  McLennan ;  and 
though  many  of  his  results  are  permanent,  and  the  mass 
of  material  he  collected  invaluable,  yet,  in  the  light  of  the 
present  state  of  the  science  of  sociology,  the  whole  subject 
merits  a  new  examination. 

Westermarck2  and  Giddings3  appear  to  be  right  ini 
holding  that  the  family  of  primitive  man  was  an  inter- >' 
mediate  development  between  that  of  the  highest  animals? 
and  the  lowest  living  men.  In  the  lowest  existing  human! 
societies  the  usual  form  of  marriage  is  a  temporary  mo- 
nogamy.4 It  is  improbable  that  back  of  this  there  was  a 
time  when  the  marriage  relations,  taking  mankind  as  a 
whole,  were  less  clearly  defined,  since  temporary  mar- 
riages of  this  character  appear  among  the  higher  apes.6 
It  is  possible  —  and  a  possibility  of  which  writers  on  soci- 
ology take  too  little  notice  —  that  increased  intelligence 
on  the  part  of  man  may  in  some  races  have  introduced  into 
sexual  relations  degenerate  practices.  Higher  mental 
power  is,  in  the  first  instance,  usually  devoted  to  increased 
gratification  of  appetite,  until  the  growth  of  moral  senti- 
ment brings  the  power  of  intelligence  under  the  sway  of 
worthy  aims.  It  may  easily  have  been,  therefore,  that 
human  intelligence  first,  in  some  instances,  exercised 

1  See  Giddings's  Principles  of  Sociology,  p.  266. 
3  History  of  Human  Marriage,  pp.  14,  15,  and  50. 

*  Principles  of  Sociology,  p.  264. 

*  Ibid. 

*  History  of  Human  Marriage,  pp.  14, 15,  and  60. 


42  SEMITIC   ORIGINS 


itself  in  gaining  more  frequent  gratification  for  sexual 
desire.  It  is  not  likely  that  this  would  overthrow  the 
kind  of  family  organization  which  had  obtained  among 
our  prehuman  ancestors,  since  the  economic  necessities 
of  life  would  be  sufficient,  in  most  parts  of  the  world,  to 
insure  the  union  of  father  and  mother  until  the  mother 
and  child  could  obtain  food  for  themselves.  It  would, 
however,  tend  to  produce  lawlessness  in  sexual  relations, 
which  would  bring  into  existence  a  sort  of  promiscuity  by 
the  side  of  the  primitive  temporary  monogomy.  This 
promiscuous  intercourse  would,  on  the  part  of  the  men,  be 
participated  in  by  those  of  all  ages;  while  among  the 
women  it  would  be  more  often  the  young  who  would 
indulge,  for  these  would  more  often  attract  by  their  beauty, 
—  which  in  such  communities  quickly  fades,  —  and  both 
desire  and  inexperience  of  the  consequences  would  lead 
them  in  this  direction.  This  freedom  has,  I  think,  been 
perpetuated  among  those  peoples  who  attach  a  religious 
significance  to  an  act  of  free  love  on  the  part  of  their 
women  before  marriage. 

That  something  like  this  occurred  in  the  develop- 
ment of  the  Semites,  two  facts  make  probable:  (1)  the 
tendency  of  the  early  Semitic  peoples  to  sexual  excesses, 
a  trait  which  points  to  an  early  bent  in  this  direction ;  and 
(2)  the  fact  that  in  the  Ishtar  cult  in  several  different 
Semitic  countries  a  religious  importance  was  attached  to  an 
act  of  free  love  on  the  part  of  woman  before  she  entered  wed- 
lock. Thus,  Herodotus,  Strabo,  and  the  apocryphal  letter 
of  Jeremiah  tell  us  that  every  Babylonian  woman  must  once 
in  her  life  offer  herself  in  the  temple  of  the  goddess  to 
whatever  man  might  come.1  Ephraim,2  the  Syrian,  affirms 
the  same  practice  among  the  Arabians  in  their  worship  of 
the  mother  goddess;  and  Augustine,  in  describing  the 

1  See  Herodotus,  Bk.  I,  ch.  199 ;  Strabo,  Bk.  XVI,  ch.  I20,  and  the 
Epistle  of  Jeremiah,  w.  42,  43.  Cf.  Hebraica,  Vol.  X,  pp.  20,  21,  and 
JBL.,  Vol.  X,  p.  79  ff. 

a  Opera,  Vol.  II,  pp.  458,  459.     Cf.  Hebraica,  Vol.  X,  pp.  68,  59. 


PRIMITIVE  SEMITIC  SOCIAL  LIFE  43 

feast  of  the  mother  of  the  gods  among  the  Carthaginians, 
makes  it  probable  that  the  custom  also  existed  there.1 
Herodotus,  in  the  passage  cited,  says  that  the  custom  is 
also  found  in  parts  of  Cyprus.  We  know  that  a  kindred 
goddess  was  worshipped  there,2  and  it  was  no  doubt  in 
connection  with  her  worship.  Lucian  vouches  for  the 
existence  of  the  custom  at  Byblos,  the  old  Phoenician 
Gebal,  but  tells  us  enough  to  show  that  it  had  there  under- 
gone certain  modifications ;  a  woman  who  did  not  wish  to 
sacrifice  her  chastity  might  sacrifice  her  hair.3 

This  custom,  thus  widely  extended,  is  pretty  good  proof 
that  the  practice  in  question  goes  back  to  primitive  Semitic 
times.  This  view  is  confirmed  by  a  passage  in  the  Gil- 
garnish  epic.  In  the  second  tablet  of  this  poem  there  is  a 
description  of  how  Eabani,  a  wild  man  of  the  mountains 
or  a  primitive  man,  was  enticed  from  the  beast  with  which 
he  had  previously  satisfied  his  passion,4  by  an  emissary  of 
the  goddess  Ishtar.8  The  fact  that  primitive  man  is  here 
regarded  as  having  promiscuous  intercourse  with  the  ani- 
mals is  in  itself  a  testimony  to  its  existence  among  human 
beings.  Jastrow  holds  that  there  is  a  reflection  of  this, 
or  a  similar  story,  in  Gen.  2,  where  he  believes  the 
original  form  of  the  narrative  represented  man  as  having 
intercourse  with  the  beasts  until  woman  was  brought  to 
him ;  and  that  then  he  abandoned  the  animals  and  became 
"one  flesh"  with  her.6  This  view  has  much  to  commend 

1  See  his  De  Civitate  Dei,  Bk.  II,  ch.  iv.   Cf.  Hebraica,  Vol.  X,  pp.  50, 51. 

*  Cf.  Hebraica,  Vol.  X,  pp.  42-47,  and  Journal  of  Hellenic  Studies 
for  1888,  pp.  175-206. 

8  Lucian's  De  Syria  Dea,  §  6  ff. 

4  That  this  is  the  meaning  of  the  passage  Jastrow  has  pointed  out, 
AJSL.,  Vol.  XV,  p.  202. 

6  See  Haupt's  Nimrodepos,  Leipzig,  1884,  pp.  10,  11 ;  Jeremias's  Izdu- 
bar-Nimrod,  Leipzig,  1891,  pp.  15-18;  Hebraica,  Vol.  X,  pp.  2,  3; 
Jastrow's  Religion  of  Babylonia  and  Assyria,  pp.  477,  478  ;  and  Jensen, 
in  Schrader's  KB.,  Vol.  VI,  Berlin,  1900.  pp.  125-127.  According  to 
Jensen's  reconstruction  of  the  poem,  the  passage  is  in  the  first  tablet. 

6  See  Jastrow's  article,  "  Adam  and  Eve  in  Babylonian  Literature," 
AJSL.,  Vol.  XV,  pp.  207,  208. 


44  SEMITIC   ORIGINS 


it.  The  presence  in  the  Gilgamish  epic  of  a  female 
priestess  whose  life  is  consecrated  to  this  impure  service 
reveals  the  existence  of  an  institution  which  could  hardly 
fail  to  grow  out  of  the  conditions  which  we  have  supposed 
to  exist.  From  the  earliest  times  there  must  have  been, 
as  there  are  now,  women  who,  for  one  reason  or  another, 
gave  their  lives  to  the  satisfaction  of  desire.  Under 
primitive  conditions  this  would  be  done  much  more  freely 
than  now,  since  there  could  not  be  much,  if  any,  public 
opinion  against  it.  Such  religion  as  these  early  men  had 
would,  in  the  lapse  of  time,  preserve,  through  the  con- 
servatism of  mankind  with  regard  to  religious  practices, 
these  conditions  under  the  guise  of  sacred  service  far 
beyond  the  state  of  society  in  which  they  had  their  birth ; 
and  thus  present  the  anomaly  which  we  find  in  so  much 
of  ancient  Semitic  life,  of  an  impure  priestess  ministering 
in  a  community  whose  marriage  ideal  was  relatively  pure. 
The  Eabani  episode  is  one  of  the  oldest  strata1  of  a 
poem,  the  later  parts  of  which  are  some  four  thousand 
years  old,  and  may  well  be  held  to  reflect  tolerably  primi- 
tive ideas.  We  cannot  be  far  wrong,  therefore,  if  we 
hold,  on  the  evidence  presented,  that  in  one  of  the  earliest 
stages  of  Semitic  development  —  a  stage  reached  perhaps 
before  their  separation  from  the  Hamites  —  such  a  strong 
tendency  to  unregulated  intercourse  existed,  and  that 
its  results  are  seen  in  the  religious  practices  which  sur- 
vived here  and  there  far  down  into  historic  times.  In 
Oman,  where  Mohammedan  influences  are  felt  less  than 
in  the  most  of  Arabia,  maiden  virtue  is,  according  to  Pal- 
grave,  still  of  little  account.2  Sprenger  cites  a  curious 
passage  from  Yaqut,3  with  regard  to  the  town  of  Mirbat, 

1  Cf.  Jastrow's  Eeligion  of  Babylonia  and  Assyria,  pp.  474-478,  513. 

2  Cf.  Palgrave's  Central  and  Eastern  Arabia,  Vol.  II,  p.  267. 

8  Cf.  Sprenger's  Alte  Geographic.  Arabiens,  p.  97.  For  the  original 
see  Jacut's  Geographisches  Worterbuch,  ed.  Wtistenfeld,  Leipzig,  1869, 
Vol.  IV,  p.  482.  Noldeke  also  admits  (ZDMG.,  Vol.  XLV,  p.  155), 
that  among  the  Semites  a  kind  of  prostitution  was  practised  without 
shame. 


PRIMITIVE   SEMITIC  SOCIAL  LIFE  46 

in  the  course  of  which  it  is  said :  "  Their  women  go  each 
night  to  the  outer  part  of  the  city  and  devote  themselves 
to  strange  men,  and  sport  with  them  the  greater  part  of 
the  night.  The  husband,  brother,  son,  and  nephew  goes 
by  without  taking  notice,  and  entertains  himself  with 
another."  This  must  have  been  a  survival,  under  some- 
what changed  conditions,  of  the  primitive  tendency  of  the 
Semites  to  unregulated  indulgence. 

That  there  existed  a  temporary  monogamy,  such  as 
sociologists  postulate  for  the  earliest  human  families,  side 
by  side  with  this  unregulated  intercourse,  can  also  be 
shown  to  be  true.  Whether  living  in  an  oasis  or  wander- 
ing from  place  to  place  in  the  deserts  of  Arabia,  women 
would  be,  from  the  earliest  times,  needed  to  perform  the 
drudgery  of  the  household  and  the  camp,  that  the  men 
might  be  free  for  those  duties  everywhere  considered  more 
manly  by  savages  and  barbarians  —  the  duties  of  fighting 
for  defence  or  plunder.  These  women  must  have  been,  in 
the  earliest  period,  the  mothers  and  sisters  of  the  men,  and 
not  their  wives,  for  ancient  Semitic  marriage  was  every- 
where exceedingly  temporary  and  divorce  extremely  com- 
mon, —  facts  which  show  that  the  primitive  Semitic 
marriage  tie  was  an  evanescent  bond.  These  facts  are 
abundantly  attested  by  the  Old  Testament,  the  Baby- 
lonian contracts,  the  Qur'an,  by  numerous  instances  in 
Arabic  life,  and  by  the  condition  of  Abyssinian  society  at 
the  present  time. 

Among  the  Israelites  of  the  Old  Testament  the  senti- 
ment seems  to  have  been  somewhat  against  divorce ;  and 
yet  the  law  of  Deuteronomy l  makes  it  so  exceedingly  easy 
that  it  evidently  points  back  to  a  time  when  divorce  was 
much  more  common. 

Among  the  Babylonians  the  frequency  of  divorce  is  not 

so  easy  to  trace,  since  we  have  not,  as  in  Deuteronomy, 

general  statements  of  law,  but  must  draw  our  inferences 

from  the  study  of  special  cases.     Nevertheless,  in  the  few 

i  Deut.  24i-8.     cf.  Isa.  50*. 


46  SEMITIC   ORIGINS 


marriage  contracts  and  records  of  Babylonian  divorce 
which  have  been  studied,  a  sufficient  number  of  instances 
appear  to  make  it  clear  that  divorce  was  not  uncommon. 
Peiser  has  pointed  out  that  two  tablets  in  the  British 
Museum  reveal,  upon  comparison,  that  a  woman  who  had 
been  married  to  one  man  was  within  eight  months  married 
to  another,  while  the  first  was  still  living.1  The  fact, 
too,  that  provisions  for  divorce  were  usually  introduced 
into  the  marriage  contracts  of  those  women  who  married 
without  a  dowry,  is  clear  proof  that  divorce  was  so  com- 
mon in  Babylonia  that  women  were  compelled  to  protect 
themselves  against  it  in  the  marriage  contract.2  Where 
the  woman  carried  to  the  husband  a  dower,  this  was  not 
necessary,  since  in  Babylonian  law  the  dowry  was  always 
hers,  so  that  in  case  the  husband  divorced  her  he  would 
lose  it.  In  such  cases  the  self-interest  of  the  husband  was 
thought  to  be  a  sufficient  protection  to  the  wife.8 

The  evidence  from  the  Arabs  is  more  abundant  and, 
from  sources  both  ancient  and  modern,  is  of  the  same 
character.  The  Qur'an  contains  two  passages  which  attest 
the  frequency  of  divorce.  Sura  651"6  takes  it  for  granted 
that  divorces  will  be  frequent,  and  provides  that  the 
woman  shall  not  be  sent  forth  burdened  with  the  prospects 
of  motherhood;  while  Sura  3348  supposes  that  men  may 
frequently  divorce  their  wives  for  whims  after  marrying 
them,  but  before  marriage  relations  have  really  been  estab- 
lished. The  custom  of  divorce  for  any  cause,  at  the 
wish  of  the  husband,  was,  in  the  time  of  the  prophet,  too 
thoroughly  fixed  in  Arabic  custom,  and  too  congenial 

i  See  his  Babylonische  fiechtsleben,  Berlin,  1890-8,  Vol.  II,  pp.  13-15. 
The  first  of  these  texts  is  published  in  Strassmaier's  Babylonische  Texte, 
Heft  VII,  No.  Ill ;  the  second  is,  so  far  as  I  know,  unpublished. 

8  Cf.  Strassmaier,  ibid.,  No.  183,  and  fnschriften  Nabuchodonosor,  No. 
101 ;  also,  Peiser,  op.  cit.,  Vol.  IV,  pp.  12,  13  ;  and  Merx  in  Beitrage  zur 
Assyriologie,  Vol.  IV,  pp.  4-8  ;  and  my  article  on  "Contracts,"  §§  yiii, 
ix,  in  Assyrian  and  Babylonian  Literature,  Aldine  ed.,  New  York,  1901 . 

8  See  my  remarks  in  the  article  on  "Contracts,"  §  ix,  in  Assyrian 
nnd  Babylonian  Literature. 


PRIMITIVE  SEMITIC   SOCIAL  LIFE  47 

to  the  natures  of  the  prophet  and  his  followers,  to  be 
changed;  hence  it  was  crystallized  in  Mohammed's  law 
and  passed  on  to  other  generations.1  This  liberty  has 
been  fully  exercised  by  many  of  the  faithful.  Thus  Ali, 
the  son-in-law  of  the  prophet,  married,  including  all  that 
he  married  and  divorced,  more  than  two  hundred  women. 
Sometimes  he  included  as  many  as  four  wives  in  one  con- 
tract, and  divorced  four  at  one  time,  taking  four  others  in 
their  stead.2  A  certain  Mughayrah  b.  Sha'abah  is  reported 
to  have  married  eighty  women  in  the  course  of  his  life,3 
while  Mohammed  b.  At-Tayib,  the  dyer  of  Baghdad,  who 
died  in  the  year  A.H.  423,  at  the  age  of  eighty-five,  is 
said  to  have  married  in  all  more  than  nine  hundred 
women.  If  he  began  his  marital  career  at  the  age  of 
fifteen,  he  must  have  had  on  the  average  nearly  thirteen 
new  wives  a  year  through  his  whole  life.4  This  liberty 
is  exercised  in  Arabian  countries  still.  Palgrave  relates 
that  the  Sultan  of  Qatar  in  eastern  Arabia  married  a  new 
wife  every  month  or  fortnight,  on  whom  the  brief  honors 
of  matrimony  were  bestowed  for  a  like  period,  and  who 
was  then  retired  on  a  pension.5  Doughty  also  tells6  how 
Zeyd,  his  host,  a  petty  sheik  of  the  Bedawi,  not  only 
permitted  one  of  his  wives  to  be  courted  by  another  Arab, 
but  offered  to  divorce  her  that  Doughty  might  marry  her. 
Indeed,  in  parts  of  Arabia  divorces  are,  in  certain  cases, 
not  necessary,  since  the  marriages  are  contracted  for  a 
limited  period  of  definite  length.  Ammianus  Marcellinus 
(XIV.  4)  gives  this  as  their  usual  type  of  marriage.  After 
a  certain  day,  he  says,  the  wife  may  withdraw  if  she 

1  For  an  excellent  account  of  divorce  among  the  Arabs,  see  Wellhausen 
in  the  Nachrichten  der  Kgl.  Gesell.  d.  Wiss.  zu  G'ott.,  1893,  p.  452  ff. 

a  Cf.  Lane's  translation  of  the  TTiousand  and  One  Nights,  Vol.  I,  p. 
318  ff.,  cited  by  Wilken,  Het  Matriarchaat  bij  de  Oude  Arabieren,  p.  18. 

*Ibid. 

4  Ibid. 

6  Central  and  Eastrrn  Arabia,  Vol.  II,  pp.  232,  233. 

6  Arabia  Deserta,  Vol.  I,  pp.  320,  321.  Zeyd  had  once  before  found 
a  husband  for  a  divorced  wife  of  his,  see  i/iid. ,  p.  237. 


48  SEMITIC  ORIGINS 


pleases.  Somewhat  of  the  same  character  is  a  temporary 
form  of  marriage  which  still  exists  in  Sunan,  a  town  fifteen 
days  from  Mocha  in  south  Arabia.  It  is  described  as  fol- 
lows :  "  In  all  the  streets  there  are  brokers  for  wives,  so 
that  a  stranger,  who  has  not  the  conveniency  of  a  house  in 
the  city  to  lodge  in,  may  marry  and  be  made  a  free  burgher 
for  a  small  sum.  When  the  man  sees  his  spouse  and  likes 
her,  they  agree  on  the  price  and  term  of  weeks,  months,  or 
years,  and  then  appear  before  the  Kadi  (q&dhi),  or  judge 
of  the  place,  and  enter  their  names  and  terms  in  his  book, 
which  costs  a  shilling  or  thereabout.  And  joining  hands 
before  him  the  marriage  is  valid,  for  better  or  for  worse, 
till  the  expiration  of  the  term  agreed  upon.  And  if  they 
have  a  mind  to  part  or  renew  the  contract,  they  are  at  lib- 
erty to  choose  for  themselves  what  they  judge  most  proper ; 
but  if  either  wants  to  separate  during  the  term  limited, 
there  must  be  a  commutation  of  money  paid  by  the  separat- 
ing party  to  the  other  according  as  they  can  agree ;  and  so 
they  become  free  to  make  a  new  marriage  elsewhere."1 

In  Mecca,  whither  throngs  of  pilgrims  regularly  resort, 
some  of  whom  tarry  for  longer  or  shorter  spaces  of  time, 
marriages  of  similarly  short  duration  are  still  entered 
into ;  and  women  go  thither  from  Egypt  with  the  avowed 
purpose  of  entering  into  such  alliances.2 

In  Abyssinia  civil  marriages,  into  which  ordinary  people 
enter,  are  still  dissoluble  at  will,  and  divorce  is  very  fre- 
quent. It  is  nothing  unusual  for  husbands  and  wives  to 
exchange  partners,  all  remaining  as  before  on  the  best  of 
terms.  Sometimes  marriages  are  contracted  for  a  fixed 

1  Quoted  by  Wilken  in  Net  Matriarchaat  bij  de  Oude  Arabieren,  p.  15, 
from  Hamilton's  New  Account  of  the  East  Indies,  Vol.  I,  pp.  62,  53. 

2  See  C.  Snouck  Hurgronje's  Mekka,  Haag,  1888-9,  Vol.  II,  p.  5  ff., 
and  109-112,  and  S.  M.  Zwemer's  Arabia,  the  Cradle  of  Islam,  New 
York  (Revell),  1900,  p.  41.      Zwemer  is,  however,  dependent  on  Hur- 
gronje.    In  Somaliland,  where  the  native  customs  have  been  shaped  by 
Arabic  immigration,  till  it  is  not  easy  to  tell  always  how  much  is  native 
and  how  much  is  not,  divorce  is  very  common.    Cf.  Siidarabische  Expe- 
dition, Bd.  I,  Die  Somali- Sprache  von  Leo  Keinisch,  Wien,  1900,  p.  109. 


PRIMITIVE   SEMITIC  SOCIAL  LIFE  49 

period,  at  the  end  of  which  husband  and  wife  separate. 
No  stigma  attaches  to  those  who  find  a  change  of  partners 
desirable.  Inconstancy  is  common  and  chastity  not  highly 
valued.1 

When  now  we  find  in  all  Semitic  countries  a  tendency 
to  make  the  term  of  marriage  brief,  —  a  tendency  which  it 
requires  a  high  degree  of  civilization  to  subdue  in  them, 
—  the  inference  is  surely  valid,  that  among  the  primitive 
Semites  marriage  relations  were  in  like  degree  temporary. 
It  is  contrary  to  all  analogy  to  suppose  that  the  affections 
of  the  primitive  Semite  were  more  constant  than  those  of 
his  semicivilized  descendant,  or  that  there  were  in  ancient 
times  stronger  inducements  than  in  more  recent  centuries 
for  the  perpetuation  of  the  marriage  tie. 

This  fact  is  one  of  great  importance,  since  its  effect 
upon  the  constitution  of  the  primitive  Semitic  family 
must  have  been  serious.  When  marriages  were  of  brief 
duration,  and  the  same  man  had  several  wives  in  succes- 
sion, the  most  of  them  cannot  have  been  his  sisters,  even 
if  such  marriages  had  been  permitted.  There  are,  as  we 
shall  see  by  and  by,  some  possible  instances  of  such  mar- 
riages among  the  Semites ;  but  for  the  most  part  the  feel- 
ing against  mating  with  members  of  the  same  family, 
which  is  so  widely  disseminated  among  the  races  of  the 
world,2  appears  also  among  the  Semitic  peoples.  Even  if 
this  feeling  had  been  absent,  the  transitory  character  of 
marriage  and  the  frequency  with  which  men  took  new 
wives  would  make  it  certain  that  most  of  them  would  be 
of  other  families,  if  not  of  other  clans. 

These  wives  would,  when  discarded,  return  to  their 
kindred,  if  indeed  they  had  ever  left  it,  and  would  there, 

1  Cf.  Bent's  Sacred  City  of  the  Ethiopians,  1893,  pp.  31  and  35  ff.,  and 
A  Visit  to  Abyssinia,  by  W.  Winstanley,  London,  1881,  Vol.  II,  pp.  73, 74, 
also  Modern  Abyssinia,  by  Augustus  B.  Wylde,  London,  1901,  pp.  161 
and  254. 

3  See  Starcke,  Primitive  Family,  pp.  210,  211 ;  Westermarck,  History 
of  Human  Marriage,  pp.  644,  545 ;  and  Giddings,  Principles  of  Sociology, 
p.  267. 


50  SEMITIC  ORIGINS 


if  they  did  not  marry  again,  find  support.  Since  the  period 
of  a  woman's  life  during  which  she  was  desired  in  mar- 
riage was  much  shorter  than  the  corresponding  period  in 
the  life  of  a  man,  many  of  these  discarded  wives  must,  in 
any  event,  have  been  ultimately  left  with  their  own  kin- 
dred ; 1  where,  if  they  carried  their  children  with  them,  they 
would  be  esteemed,  on  account  of  the  children,  as  the  real 
perpetuators  of  the  clan.  It  is  therefore  altogether  prob- 
able, as  was  remarked  above,  that  the  women  who,  in  the 
primitive  Semitic  clan,  performed  the  drudgery,  whether 
in  oasis  or  in  desert  life,  were  usually  the  sisters  and 
mothers,  and  not  the  wives,  of  the  men. 

Before,  however,  we  accept  this  conclusion,  with  all  its 
consequences,  it  is  necessary  to  examine  two  other  points 
which  are  closely  connected :  (1)  the  residence  of  the  wife 
during  her  marriage;  and  (2)  the  method  of  reckoning 
kinship.  In  marriages  of  a  temporary  nature  four  differ- 
ent cases  are  possible:  (1)  the  wife  may  live  with  her 
husband's  kindred  while  married  and  return  to  her  own 
when  divorced,  he  retaining  the  children;  (2)  she  may 
live  while  married  with  her  husband's  kindred,  but  on 
returning  to  her  own  take  the  children  with  her;  (3)  she 
may  live  in  her  own  clan,  whither  the  husband  goes  to 
live  with  her,  she  retaining  the  children  when  he  with- 
draws ;  and  (4)  she  may  reside  in  her  own  clan  and  the 
husband  in  his,  simply  receiving  visits  from  him  from 
time  to  time,  in  which  case  the  children  remain  with  her. 
In  the  first  of  these  cases  the  children  would  belong  to  the 
clan  of  the  father,  while  in  the  last  three  they  would 
belong  to  the  clan  of  the  mother. 

The  first  of  these  conditions  is  that  which  has  prevailed 
in  the  Arabian  world  from  the  time  of  the  prophet  to  the 
present.  The  Qur'an  (Sura  656)  specifically  provides 
that  the  children  shall  be  reared  for  the  father,  and  at  his 
expense.  Many  interesting  instances  of  this  might  be 
cited  in  the  history  of  Mohammedan  families;  for  exam- 

1  Of.  Giddings,  op.  cit.,  p.  204  fi. 


PRIMITIVE   SEMITIC  SOCIAL  LIFE  51 

pie,  Zeyd  es-Sheychan,  the  sheik  who  was  Doughty 's  host, 
and  to  whom  reference  has  already  been  made,  divorced 
the  mother  of  his  son  Selim,  but  reared  the  son  in  his  own 
family.1  If  this  system  of  paternal  kinship  were  primi- 
tive, we  might  suppose  that  the  Semitic  family  had  always 
existed  in  much  the  form  of  the  Arabic  family  of  to-day. 
If,  however,  it  can  be  shown  that  descent  was  once  reck- 
oned through  the  mother,  and  that  the  present  patronymic 
family  has  superseded  a  metronymic  organization,  we  shall 
then  be  at  liberty  to  inquire  which  of  the  last  three  posi- 
tions we  supposed  above  to  be  possible  actually  represents 
the  status  of  the  primitive  Semitic  wife. 

The  late  Robertson  Smith  and  others  have  established 
the  fact,  as  well  as  the  state  of  the  evidence  will  permit 
it  to  be  established,  that  back  of  the  custom  of  tracing 
descent  through  males  there  was  a_time  when  the  Semites 
traced  it  through  females.2  It  is  true  that  the  first  point 
which  Smith  makes,  that  if  kinship  were  reckoned  by 
blood  it  would  have  to  be  reckoned  through  the  mother, 
because  in  primitive  times  paternity  was  uncertain,  — 
owing  to  the  state  of  promiscuity,3  —  is  one  which,  in  the 
light  of  recent  sociological  investigation 4  must  be  aban- 
doned, for  it  is  altogether  likely  that  in  most  cases  the 
father  was  known.  Of  his  arguments,  which  still  remain 
valid,  a  summary  may  be  made  as  follows :  (1)  The  well- 
known  Biblical  phrase  for  relationship  is  "bone  of  my 
bone  and  flesh  of  my  flesh."  "Flesh"  is  explained  in 
Lev.  2549  by  the  word  for  clan.  The  Arabs  attach  great 
importance  to  a  bond  created  by  eating  together ;  we  must 
suppose,  therefore,  that  the  bond  between  those  born  of 
the  same  womb  and  nurtured  at  the  same  breast  would  be 


1  Doughty's  Arabia  Deserta,  Vol.  I,  pp.  101,  217,  237,  etc. 

a  See  his  Kinship,  pp.  145-165. 

*  Ibid.,  pp.  146-148. 

4  See  Starcke's  Primitive.  Family,  p.  25,  his  article  in  the  International 
Journal  of  Ethics,  Vol.  Ill,  p.  455,  and  Westermarck's  History  of 
Human  Marriage,  pp.  108,  109. 


52  SEMITIC   ORIGINS 


more  nearly  of  the  same  "  flesh  "  and  the  same  "  clan  "  than 
any  others.  (2)  The  word  rahim,  womb,  is  the  most  gen- 
eral word  for  kinship,  and  points  to  a  primitive  kinship 
through  the  mother.  (3)  The  custom  called  'acica,  by 
which  a  child  is  consecrated  to  the  god  of  his  father's 
tribe,  cannot  have  been  primitive.  It  must  have  sprung 
up  in  a  state  of  transition  to  insure  the  counting  of  the 
offspring  to  the  father's  side  of  the  house.  (4)  Cases 
occur  in  the  historical  period  in  which  a  boy  when  grown 
attaches  himself  to  his  mother's  tribe.  The  poet  Zohair 
is  a  case  in  point,  and  Arabic  antiquarians  appear  to  have 
known  that  such  cases  were  not  uncommon.1  (5)  The 
fear  that  sons  would  choose  their  mother's  clans  led  men 
who  were  wealthy  to  marry  within  their  own  kin. 
(6)  The  relation  between  a  man  and  his  maternal  uncle 
is  still  considered  closer  than  between  a  man  and  his 
paternal  uncle.  (7)  Joseph's  sons  born  of  his  Egyptian 
wife  were  not  regarded  as  members  of  Israel's  clan  until 
formally  adopted  by  him  (Gen.  485-6).  (8)  Abraham 
married  his  paternal  sister,  who  was  not  the  daughter  of 
his  own  mother.  Tamar  might  have  legally  been  the  wife 
of  her  half-brother  Amnon,  the  relationship  being  on  the 
father's  side  (2  Sam.  1313).  Such  unions  were  known  in 
Judah  as  late  as  the  time  of  Ezekiel  (see  ch.  2211).  Tab- 
nith,  king  of  Sidon,  married  his  father's  daughter,2  and 
such  marriages  were  known  in  Mecca.  Since  the  marriage 
of  those  really  regarded  as  brothers  and  sisters  was  abhor- 
rent to  the  Semites,  kinship  must  in  these  cases  have  been 
counted  through  the  mother.  (9)  In  the  Arabic  genea- 
logical tables  metronymic  groups  are  still  found.  (10)  In 
Aramaic  inscriptions  found  at  Hegra  metronymic  clans 
appear.3 

Although  these   arguments  of   Smith  are  interwoven 

1  Cf.  Smith's  Kinship,  pp.  155,  246-253. 

2  Cf.  CIS.,  Ft.  I,  Vol.  I,  No.  3,  11.  13-15. 

8  Cf.  CIS.,  Pt.  II,  Vol.  I,  Nos.  198  and  209.    See  also  Smith's  Kinship, 
pp.  313-316. 


PRIMITIVE   SEMITIC   SOCIAL  LIFE  63 

with  some  theories  of  polyandry,  the  consideration  of 
which  must  be  postponed  a  little,  and  with  some  argu- 
ments which  do  not  appear  to  be  valid,  these  which  we 
have  summarized  present  facts  which,  regardless  of  any  J 
theories  of  marriage,  prove  that  at  one  time  kinship  was 
reckoned  through  the  mother. 

This  conclusion  is  corroborated  by  evidence  gathered  by 
other  scholars.  Noldeke  noted  that  in  the  religious  texts 
of  the  Mandseans  a  man  is  described  as  the  son  of  his 
mother,  which  indicates  that  among  them  kinship  was 
reckoned  through  the  mother.1  Peiser  has  pointed  out2 
that  among  the  Babylonians  a  man  could  if  he  chose  re- 
nounce his  family  and  join  the  kindred  of  his  wife,  which 
is  a  relic  of  the  same  custom.  Wellhausen  has  observed8 
that  in  the  genealogies  of  the  Pentateuch  the  J  document 
reckons  descent  through  the  mother,  while  in  the  P 
document  it  is  traced  through  the  father. 

These  arguments  may  be  confirmed  by  several  important 
considerations.  If  descent  had  not  been  reckoned  through 
the  mother,  the  position  which,  as  will  be  pointed  out 
below,  woman  held  among  the  early  Semites  would  have 
been  impossible,  as  would  also  a  type  of  marriage  for  which 
there  is  considerable  proof,  and  which  will  be  considered 
in  its  place. 

If,  now,  the  fact  be  accepted  that  kinship  was  counted 
through  the  female  line,  their  habit  in  this  respect  is 
found  to  conform  to  that  of  most  other  primitive  peoples, 
and  a  vantage  ground  is  obtained  from  which  the  social 
phenomena  which  remain  to  be  considered  become  intel- 
ligible to  us.  If  children  did  not  belong  to  the  clan  of 
the  father,  the  first  of  the  possible  forms  of  marriage  men- 

1  Monatsschrift,  1884,  p.  304. 

a  Mittheilungen  der  vorderasiatische  Gesellschaft,  1896,  p.  155. 

8  Nachrichten  d.  Kgl.  Gesell.  d.  Wiss.  zu  Gott.,  1893,  p.  478,  n.  2. 

4  See  Spencer's  Principles  of  Sociology,  Vol.  I,  pp.  698,  703 ;  Lubbock's 
Origin  of  Civilization,  etc.,  5th  ed.,  pp.  151-157  ;  Starcke's  Primitive 
Family,  pp.  18,  25,  37,  39.  74 ;  Westermarck's  History  of  Human  Mar- 
riage, pp.  96,  97,  539  ;  and  Giddings's  Principles  of  Sociology,  p.  265. 


54  SEMITIC   ORIGINS 


tioned  above  is  clearly  eliminated.  The  mother,  as  a  rule, 
when  she  left  her  husband's  residence  (if  she  had  lived 
there  at  all)  must  have  taken  the  children  with  her ;  and 
if  she  resided  in  her  own  clan,  it  is  clear  that  she  retained 
the  children.  Of  course  it  is  possible  that  from  the  earli- 
est times  a  man  might,  when  the  clans  were  well  disposed 
to  one  another,  induce  a  woman  to  leave  her  own  kindred 
and  go  to  live  with  his.  Of  this  we  have  almost  no  evi- 
dence, and  in  the  nature  of  the  case  can  obtain  little. 
The  point  proved  by  Smith,1  however,  that  in  early  pre- 
Mohammedan  times  the  natural  protectors  of  a  woman 
were  not  her  husband  and  his  kindred,  but  her  own  rela- 
tives, makes  it  improbable  that  in  the  earliest  Semitic 
communities  the  woman  left  her  own  people  at  all.  Prob- 
ably, therefore,  the  second  of  our  possible  arrangements  of 
Semitic  marriage  should  also  be  eliminated. 

Of  the  third  possibility  —  the  residence  of  the  husband 
in  the  wife's  tribe  —  we  have  more  direct  evidence.  The 
classical  instance  of  this,  which  all  writers  cite,  is  the  case 
of  Jacob  and  his  wives,  Leah  and  Rachel.2  Jacob  lived 
with  them  in  Laban's  clan,  and  when  he  left  was  blamed 
for  taking  away  the  children.  Laban  declared,  "the 
daughters  are  my  daughters  and  the  children  are  my 
children  "  (Gen.  3143),  i.e.  they  belong  to  my  clan.  A 
second  argument,  and  one  which  proves  that  the  case  of 
Jacob  and  Laban  is  not  an  isolated  instance,  is  found 
in  the  fact  that  the  phrase  for  marriage  which  is  used 
throughout  the  Old  Testament,  which  is  found  in  Syriac, 
and  is  still  used  in  south  Arabia,3  is  "he  went  in  unto 
her."  Smith  has  shown4  that  this  phrase  originated  when 
it  was  the  custom  for  a  man  to  go  to  reside  in  his  wife's 
tent  in  her  tribe.  In  Yemen  it  is  still  the  custom  for  the 
"going  in  "to  take  place  in  the  bride's  house;  and  the 
bridegroom,  if  home-born,  must  stay  some  nights  in 
the  bride's  home,  and  if  a  foreigner,  must  settle  with 

1  Kinship,  pp.  101-103.  »  Smith's  Kinship,  pp.  167,  168. 

2  Gen.,  chs.  29-31.  *  Ibid.,  pp.  167-172. 


PRIMITIVE   SEMITIC  SOCIAL  LIFE  65 

the  tribe.1  Smith  also  pointed  out  that  the  custom  in 
north  Arabia  which  compels  a  man  to  build  a  new  tent 
for  his  wife,  is  an  outgrowth  of  the  older  practice  of  enter- 
ing the  wife's  tent.  In  the  same  region  it  sometimes 
happens  still  that  the  wife  refuses  to  leave  her  tribe,  and 
the  husband  is  compelled  to  leave  his  and  go  and  join 
hers.  Lady  Blunt  relates  such  an  instance  which  came 
under  her  own  observation.2  That  this  also  occurred  in 
ancient  Babylonia,  the  case  cited  above  of  the  man  who 
joined  his  wife's  family  is  sufficient  to  prove.  Such  evi- 
dence as  this,  coming  from  so  many  portions  of  the  Semitic 
territory,  makes  it  clear  that  this  kind  of  marriage  was  a 
primitive  Semitic  practice. 

In  such  marriages  many  circumstances  might  arise  to 
call  the  husband  away  and  interrupt  the  marriage  rela- 
tions. The  clans  might  become  hostile,  so  that  it  would 
be  unsafe  for  him  to  remain,  or  his  fancy  might  weary  of 
the  bride's  attractions,  or  of  her  people,  and  then  he  would 
wander  elsewhere  to  contract  a  similar  alliance.  Such 
marriages  are  called  beena  marriage,  the  name  given  them 
in  Ceylon,  where  they  were  first  studied.  They  are  found 
in  many  parts  of  the  world.3  The  children  in  such  cases 
remain  of  course  with  the  mother,  are  reared  by  her  kin- 
dred, and  become  a  part  of  her  clan.  The  net  result, 
therefore,  of  our  discussion  up  to  this  point  is  the  estab- 
lishment of  the  fact  that  the  primitive  Semites  practised 
beena  marriage,  that  the  children  belonged  to  the  tribe  of 

1  Smith,  ibid.,  p.  168.     Among  the  Hamitic  Somalia  of  East  Africa, 
among  whom  the  Arabs  have  penetrated  and  by  whom  many  Arabic 
customs  have  been  adopted  (cf .  Seitrdge  zur  Ethnographic  und  Anthro- 
pologie  der  Somal,  Galla  und  Harari,  von  Philipp  Paulitschke,  2d  ed., 
Leipzig,  1888,  p.  2  ff.),  it  is  still  customary,  when  a  young  man  marries, 
for  the  bride,  aided  by  the  kinswomen  of  the  groom,  to  build  before  the 
marriage  feast  a  new  hut,  in  which  after  marriage  they  establish  their 
new  home.     Cf.  Siidarabische  Expedition,  Bd.  I,  Die  Somali- Sprache, 
von  Leo  Reinisch,  Wien,  1000,  p.  107. 

2  A  Pilgrimage  to  Nejd,  by  Lady  Anne  Blunt,  London,  1881,  VoL  I, 
p.  92. 

*  Cf .  Giddings's  Principles  of  Sociology,  p.  268. 


56  SEMITIC   ORIGINS 


the  mother,  and  that  the  women  of  the  household  were 
the  mothers  and  sisters,  and  not  the  wives  and  daughters, 
of  the  men.  The  third  of  the  possible  arrangements  of 
Semitic  marriage  mentioned  above  turns  out,  therefore, 
to  be  a  true  one. 

Evidence  is  also  at  hand  to  prove  that  the  fourth  of  the 
possible  arrangements  was  also  realized  in  practice.  In 
three  of  the  Mu'allakat  poems  there  are  specific  statements 
that  the  women  whom  the  poets  visited  only  occasionally 
were  members  of  other  clans,  and  that  often  they  visited 
them  at  personal  risk,1  on  account  of  the  strained  relations 
of  the  clans.  The  marriage  of  Samson  (Judges  14)  was 
also  an  alliance  of  this  character.  His  wife  resided  in  her 
own  clan,  and  he  visited  her  there.  In  such  cases  as  these 
the  marriages  were  often  terminated  by  the  migration  of 
the  tribes  in  different  directions.2  This  is  the  general 
type  of  marriage  which  Ammianus  Marcellinus  describes 
when  speaking  of  the  Arabs,  though  he  is  probably  speak- 
ing of  a  somewhat  later  development  of  it.  He  says  the 
bride  presents  her  husband  with  a  spear  and  a  tent,  and 
if  she  chooses  withdraws  after  a  certain  day.3 

This  last  phase  of  the  marriage  relation  of  the  Semites 
is  probably  but  a  modification  of  the  beena  marriage,  or  the 
beena  marriage  a  modification  of  it,  brought  about  at  times 
by  the  hostile  relation  of  the  clans,  as  in  the  case  of  Sam- 
son ;  at  times,  by  considerations  of  personal  attachment  to 
his  own  clan,  which  made  a  man  unwilling,  even  tempo- 
rarily, to  leave  it ;  and  at  times,  by  economic  necessities, 
as  will  be  pointed  out  below. 

The  general  view  which  we  have  been  led  to  take  of 
the  marriage  tie  among  the  Semites  is  confirmed  by  the 
position  held  among  them  by  women  in  ancient  times.  So 

1  See  Mu'allakat  of  Labld,  11.  16-19 ;  that  of  'Antarah,  11.  5-11 ;  and 
that  of  Harith,  11.  1-9. 

2  Mu'allakat  of  Labid,  11.  16-19. 

8  See  Bk.  XIV,  ch.  4.  He  also  remarks  on  the  temporary  character 
of  Arabic  marriages. 


PRIMITIVE   SEMITIC   SOCIAL  LIFE  57 

far  from  being  the  creature  of  man  and  almost  his  chattel, 
as  the  system  of  selling  daughters  to  become  wives  of  the 
baal  marriages  has  made  her,  she  occupied  a  position  of 
comparative  dignity,  equality,  and  independence.  Smith 
has  shown  that  in  Arabia,  in  pre-Islamic  times,  women 
were  frequently  chosen  as  judges ;  that  they  were  some- 
times queens  (of  whom  the  queen  of  Sheba  of  Biblical 
fame  is  best  known) ;  that  they  were  regarded  as  the  most 
sacred  trust  of  the  tribe;  and  that,  in  spite  of  Moham- 
med's humanitarian  laws  in  behalf  of  women,  their  posi- 
tion steadily  declined  under  Islam  in  consequence  of  the 
system  of  baal  marriage,  which  practically  made  the  hus- 
band her  lord.1  This  view  is  confirmed  by  Wellsted2 
and  Palgrave,3  who  found  that  in  Oman  and  Hasa,  where 
Islam  is  not  so  rigorously  observed  as  in  northern  Arabia, 
women  were  much  more  free  and  respected  than  in  other 
parts  of  the  peninsula.  In  several  places  they  did  not 
wear  the  veils  even  in  the  towns ;  and  in  some,  where  it 
was  worn,  the  practice  was  voluntary.4  This  freedom  is, 
without  doubt,  a  survival  from  pre-Islamic  times. 

In  ancient  Israel  we  also  catch  glimpses  of  a  similar 
freedom  and  dignity  for  women.  In  what  appears  to  be 
the  oldest  bit  of  literature  in  the  Old  Testament,6  Debo- 
rah figures  as  the  inspirer  and  director  of  the  people  in 
the  movement  for  freedom.  She  assumes  here  a  position 
as  free  and  prominent  as  any  that  woman  occupied  in 
Arabia. 

In  Babylonia,  too,  the  contract  tablets  reveal  the  fact 
that  at  the  close  of  the  New  Babylonian  Empire,  and  in 
the  early  Persian  period,  after  many  centuries  of  baal 
marriage,  women  still  held  a  position  of  great  importance 

1  Cf.  Smith's  Kinship,  pp.  100-106,  171,  and  276. 

2  Cf.  Wellsted's  Travels  in  Arabia,  Vol.  I,  pp.  351-354. 
8  Central  and  Eastern  Arabia,  Vol.  II,  p.  177. 

*  Wellsted,  op.  cit.,  Vol.  I,  pp.  101,  118,  and  146;  also  Palgrave  as  in 
n.  4. 

6  The  poem  in  Judges  5. 


58  SEMITIC   ORIGINS 


and  freedom.  Married  women  appear  with  their  husbands 
as  joint  partners  in  buying,  selling,  borrowing,  and  loan- 
ing ;  married  women  appear  alone  in  business  contracts 
relating  to  money,  real  estate,  and  slaves ;  they  make  con- 
tracts concerning  merchandise  with  men  not  their  hus- 
bands, and  appear  in  lawsuits.1  This  dignity,  which  the 
Babylonian  of  the  seventh  and  sixth  centuries  B.C.  ac- 
corded to  woman,  must  be  regarded  as  a  survival  of  the 
comparatively  independent  position  which  she  held  among 
their  early  Semitic  ancestors.  Thus  Arabia,  Palestine, 
and  Babylonia  each  contribute  to  the  proof  of  this  position. 
These  arguments,  taken  in  connection  with  the  evidence 
concerning  the  nature  of  primitive  Semitic  marriage,  are 
sufficient  to  make  it  clear  that  in  the  course  of  Semitic 
progress  the  position  of  woman,  in  the  family  and  in  the 
clan,  has  been  greatly  modified,  and  that  she  has  lost  in 
the  process  much  of  her  primitive  importance.  This  point 
will  be  still  further  confirmed  when  we  come  to  consider, 
in  subsequent  chapters,2  the  religious  argument.  It  will 
then  appear  that  in  different  parts  of  the  Semitic  territory, 
notably  in  Arabia  and  Babylonia,  goddesses  survived  till 
a  comparatively  late  time,  who  held  a  position  of  inde- 
pendence of  male  deities,  without  parallel  in  later  Semitic 
social  organization ;  and  whose  birth  would  therefore  com- 
pel us,  even  if  there  were  no  other  evidence  on  the  matter, 
to  postulate  a  condition  of  society  among  the  primitive 
Semites  in  which  woman  should  hold  a  position  similar  to 
that  described  in  the  preceding  pages.  In  many  ways 
free  of  restraint ;  often  the  head  of  her  family,  if  not  of 
her  clan ;  usually  leaving  her  maidenhood  behind  by  one 
or  more  acts  of  free  love ;  contracting  marriages  at  will  as 
fancy  dictated,  but  each  of  which  was  of  short  duration ; 
cherished  as  the  mother  of  her  children  and  the  perpetu- 
ator  of  her  family;  performing  the  drudgery  of  nomadic 

1  See  the  monograph  of  Victor  Merx,  "  Die  Stellung  der  Frauen  in 
Babylonien,"  etc.,  in  Beitrage  zur  Assyriologie,  Vol.  IV,  pp.  1-72. 
«  Chs.  Ill  and  VI. 


PRIMITIVE   SEMITIC   SOCIAL  LIFE  59 

life,  but  mingling  in,  even  when  she  did  not  direct,  the 
counsels  of  her  uncles,  brothers,  and  sons,  —  the  primitive 
Semitic  woman  was  a  picturesque  figure,  if  not  a  model 
for  more  modern  days. 

It  is  now  time  to  inquire  whether  the  primitive  Semites 
practised  polyandry.  Robertson  Smith,  following  in  the 
footsteps  of  McLennan,  interpreted  many  of  the  phenomena 
we  have  passed  in  review  as  evidence  of  polyandrous  prac- 
tices. This,  as  is  evident  from  the  treatment  accorded 
the  subject  above,  is  not  necessary.  Such  facts  as  we 
have  thus  far  examined  may  all  be  explained  on  the  basis 
of  a  temporary  monogamy  of  the  beena  type,  intermixed 
with  considerable  sexual  irregularity.  Some  of  these 
facts  are  not  inconsistent,  however,  with  the  institution 
of  polyandry ;  and  there  are  others  still  to  be  considered 
which  make  its  presence  at  some  periods  and  in  some 
localities  certain. 

Polyandry,  in  one  form  or  another,  has  existed  in  many 
parts  of  the  world.  It  is  found  in  India,  both  ancient  and 
modern,  where  it  finds  reflection  in  the  ancient  Maha- 
bharata  epic  and  other  records ;  and  it  still  appears  among 
some  existing  tribes.1  The  most  famous  instance  from 
this  land  is  that  of  the  Nairs  of  the  Malabar  coast,  whose 
life  has  been  most  fully  studied,  and  who  represent  one 
type  of  the  polyandric  institution  most  completely.2  It  is 
also  found  in  Thibet,  though  the  kind  of  polyandry  prac- 
tised there  is  of  another  type.3  Still  another  type  was, 

1  On  polyandry  in  India,  see  Hopkins's  monograph,  "  The  Ruling  Caste 
in  Ancient  India,"  JAOS.,  Vol.  XIII,  pp.  170,  354  ff.;  his  Religions  of 
India,  Boston,  1895,  pp.  467,  535  n.  ;  and  his  Great  Epic  of  India,  N.Y., 
1901,  pp.  376,  399;  Jolly's  Recht  und  Sitte  (in  Buhler's  Grundriss  der 
Indo-Arischen    Philologie   und  Altcrtumskunde,   Bd.   II,  Heft  8),  pp. 
47-40 ;  Hilderbrand's  Recht  und  Sitte  auf  den  verschiedenen  wirtschaft- 
lichen  Kulturstufen,  Jena,  1898,  pp.  15,  16 ;  Reclus's  Primitive  Folk,  pp. 
143-177,  and  Starcke's  Primitive  Family,  pp.  79-87. 

2  For  description  see  Reclus,  as  in  n.  1.     All  writers  on  marriage  and 
sociology,  from  McLennan  down,  have  much  to  say  of  them. 

8  Cf.  Spencer's  Principles  of  Sociology,  Vol.  I,  p.  659,  and  Starcke's 
Primitive  Family,  p.  134. 


60  SEMITIC   ORIGINS 


according  to  Caesar,  found  among  the  ancient  Britons,1 
and  is  still  found  among  the  Todas.2  Polyandry  is  also 
found  in  the  Polynesian  Islands,3  until  recently  in  Cey- 
lon and  New  Zealand,  in  the  Aleutian  Islands,  among  the 
Konyaks  north  of  the  Okhotsk,  and  among  the  Cossacks. 
Humboldt  observed  it  among  the  Indian  tribes  of  the  Ori- 
noco; it  was  common  in  the  Canary  Isles;  in  Africa  it 
has  been  found  among  the  Hottentots,  the  Demaras,  and 
among  the  mountain  tribes  of  the  Bantu  race.  It  formerly 
prevailed  among  the  Picts  and  Irish.4 

The  explanations  offered  for  polyandry  are  various. 
McLennan  believed  that  all  races  had  passed  through  it 
as  a  necessary  stage  on  the  way  from  promiscuity  to 
monogamy.  Those  who  reject  this  view  have  assigned  it 
to  different  causes:  some  to  poverty,5  others  to  natural 
excess  of  males  where  tribes  interbreed,6  and  others  regard 
it  as  a  mere  incident  of  family  communism.7  Poverty 
cannot  be  the  sole  cause,  since  it  is  sometimes  found 
among  the  rich.8  It  can  hardly  be  explained  by  a  natural 
excess  of  males,  since  such  excess  is  very  improbable.9  As 
a  matter  of  fact,  no  one  cause  is  sufficient  to  explain  it  in 
all  localities.10  Each  instance  of  it  must  be  studied  by 
itself  in  its  peculiar  environment  and  in  the  light  of  its 
antecedents. 

Before  we  return  to  Semitic  polyandry  it  will  be  helpful 
to  glance  at  some  of  the  different  types  of  it  which  have 
developed  in  different  countries.  These  types  are  three 

1  Cf .  De  Bello  Gallico,  V,  14,  and  Starcke,  op.  cit. ,  p.  139. 

2  Cf.  Spencer,  op.  cit.,  Vol.  I,  p.  654. 

8  Cf.  Waltz,  Anthropologie,  Vol.  VI,  pp.  128,  129. 

4  McLennan's  Studies  in  Ancient  History,  p.  97  ff.,  and  Giddings's 
Principles  of  Sociology,  p.  155  ff. 

6  So  Hilderbrand,  Recht  und  Sitte,  etc.,  pp.  15,  16,  and,  in  part,  Gid- 
dings,  op.  cit.,  pp.  155,  156,  and  276. 

6  So  Westermarck,  History  of  Human  Marriage,  pp.  476-483. 

7  So  Starcke,  Primitive  Family,  pp.  139,  140. 

8  Cf.  Westermarck,  op.  cit.,  pp.  476,  477,  and  482. 

9  Cf.  Starcke,  in  the  International  Journal  of  Ethics,  Vol.  Ill,  p.  464. 
1°  Cf.  Spencer,  op.  cit.,  Vol.  I,  p.  663. 


PRIMITIVE   SEMITIC   SOCIAL  LITE  61 

in  number:  Nair  polyandry,  in  which  a  woman  may  have 
as  many  as  a  dozen  husbands,  whom  she  receives  in  suc- 
cession or  as  fancy  dictates,  but  who  in  turn  are  free  to 
have  as  many  mistresses  as  they  can  secure ; l  Thibetan 
polyandry,  in  which  a  group  of  brothers  share  one  wife; 
and  British  polyandry,  in  which  a  group  of  sisters  become 
in  common  the  wives  of  a  group  of  brothers.  These  three 
types  represent  three  different  forms  of  the  institution. 
Of  these  the  Nair  type  is  the  most  primitive.  The  Thi- 
betan and  British  types  may  be  considered  as  modifications 
of  the  same  form,  since  they  are  in  principle  the  same. 

Returning  now  to  the  Semites,  we  may  note  that  the 
type  of  temporary  marriage,  of  which  traces  are  found  in 
the  Mu'allakat  poems  and  in  Ammianus  Marcellinus,2  is 
not  necessarily  monogamous  or  monandrous.  In  such 
temporary  unions,  in  which  the  husband  and  wife  belonged 
to  different  tribes,  it  would  very  probably  be  that  each 
would  have  acknowledged  lovers  in  other  tribes,  with 
whom  they  would  have  intimate  relations  whenever  the 
tribes  approached  one  another  so  as  to  make  it  possible. 
When  we  consider  the  sexual  bent  of  the  early  Semites 
and  the  lightness  with  which  the  marriage  tie  was  regarded, 
we  can  hardly  hesitate  to  believe  that  this  was  so.  Such 
an  arrangement  might  be  classed  as  temporary  monandry, 
or  as  polyandry  of  the  Nair  type,  according  to  the  point 
of  view  from  which  it  is  regarded.  Like  Nair  polyandry, 
it  was  at  the  same  time  polygamy.  It  differed,  however, 
from  Nair  polyandry  in  being  exogamous;  the  Nairs 
regarded  intercourse  with  one  of  another  caste  as  adul- 
tery.3 In  all  probability,  there  was  more  polyandry  than 
polygamy  in  these  marriages,  for  the  practice  of  putting 

1  Cf.  Eeclus,  Primitive  Folk,  p.  163. 

2  See  above,   p.   56.    These   temporary  marriages,  where   the   wife 
received  visits  from  her  lovers  with  the  consent  of  her  kinsmen,  were 
called  mot' a  marriages,  i.e.  marriages  of  pleasure  or  convenience.     It  is 
given  this  name  in  some  of  the  Arabic  commentaries  to  Sura  428.    See 
Wilken's  Matriarchaat,  p.  9,  n.  3. 

8  Reclus,  ap.  cit.,  p.  164. 


62  SEMITIC   ORIGINS 


to  death  infant  girls,  which  prevailed  down  to  the  time  of 
Mohammed  (see  Sura  1661),  was  in  all  probability  a  primi- 
tive Semitic  practice.  Where  the  conditions  of  life  were 
as  hard  as  they  always  were  in  the  Arabian  peninsula, 
more  warriors  than  women  would  usually  be  needed  by 
the  tribe ;  and  this  mode  of  preventing  not  only  too  many 
women,  but  too  rapid  an  increase  of  the  tribe,  in  view  of 
the  limited  means  of  sustenance,  would  be  very  natural. 
Such  a  custom  is  not  inconsistent  with  the  high  honor  in 
which  the  women  who  were  permitted  to  live  were  held, 
especially  to  a  semi-savage  mind  not  sensitive  to  incon- 
gruities. Inevitably  an  excess  of  males  would  thus  be 
produced,  which,  among  a  sexually  lax  people,  would  be 
sure  to  lead  to  polyandry.  We  cannot  be  sure  that  such 
marriages,  especially  in  later  times,  were  always  exoga- 
mous.  Those  already  cited  from  the  Mu'allakat  poems 
certainly  were,  but  there  are  others  to  be  found  in  the 
same  collection  which  were  endogamous.  Imr-ul-Kais 
alludes  in  his  Mu'allakat  to  the  fact  that  he  followed  the 
women  of  his  tribe  and  spent  a  day  in  their  company,1  and 
the  Unaizah,  whose  fruit  he  boasts  he  had  repeatedly  tasted, 
was  the  daughter  of  his  uncle.  In  like  manner  Laila,  the 
woman  celebrated  in  the  poem  of  Amr  b.  Kulthum,  was 
Amr's  kinswoman.2  In  polyandrous  marriages  of  the 
general  Nair  type,  there  might  exist  both  endogamous  and 
exogamous  alliances ;  and  so  far  as  this  form  of  marriage 
existed  among  the  Semites,  it  would  appear  from  extant 
evidence  to  have  combined  the  two  kinds  of  marriage,  that 
from  within  and  that  from  without  the  tribe.  In  so  far 
as  Semitic  feeling  on  this  point  can  be  historically  traced, 
it  was  in  favor  of  endogamy ;  Semitic  parents  were  always 
grieved  if  their  children  married  outside  their  tribe.3 

1  See  the  Arabic  commentator's  explanation  of  v.  11  of  Imr-ul-Kais's 
Mu'allakat  in  Arnold's  edition  of  the  Mu'allakat.    For  a  translation  of 
the  poems,  see  The  Seven  Poems  suspended  in  the  Temple  at  Mecca,  by 
F.  E.  Johnson,  London,  1894. 

2  See  Mu'allakat,  V,  11,  13,  14. 

8  See  Genesis  243-  *,  2G34-  &,  281- 2,  Judges  148,  etc. 


PRIMITIVE   SEMITIC   SOCIAL   LIFE 


This  is,  however,  probably  a  late  feeling,  which  sprung 
up  when  totemisrn  was  decaying,  when  primitive  condi- 
tions of  marriage  and  kinship  were  breaking  up,  and  when, 
in  disregard  of  earlier  customs  and  ideas,  the  desire  to 
keep  the  children  for  one's  tribe  was  gaining  the  ascen- 
dency. In  a  totemic  clan  where  real  sisters  are  not  taken 
as  wives,  totemic  sisters  cannot  be.1  As  the  Semitic 
clans  were  totemic  and  did  not,  as  a  rule,  marry  sisters,2 
we  must  infer  that  in  the  earlier  stages  of  development 
they  were  exogamous ;  and  that  Nair  polyandry,  in  so  far 
as  it  existed  among  them,  existed  as  an  exogamous  insti- 
tution. The  mixed  variety  with  which  we  meet  in  the 
Mu'allakat  poems  is  explained  by  the  break-up  of  the  old 
religious  ideas  which  was  in  progress,  and  the  social 
transition  which  the  introduction  of  male  kinship  was 
introducing.3 

Perhaps  the  kind  of  marriage  which  is  practised  by  the 
Hassenyeh  Arabs  of  the  White  Nile  is  a  relic  of  the  Nair 
type  of  polyandry,  though  it  might  equally  well  be  re- 
garded as  a  slight  limitation  of  the  promiscuity  of  the 
primitive  Semitic  girls,  which  we  discussed  above.  Among 
these  Arabs,  the  marriages  of  the  most  respectable  are  not 
for  more  than  four  days  in  the  week,  and  may  be  for  less 
time.  During  these  days  the  wife  must  observe  the  rules 
for  matrimonial  chastity ;  but  on  other  days  she  is  free  to 
receive  any  man  whom  she  may  fancy,  and  the  husbands 
seem  pleased  with  any  attention  paid  to  their  wives  during 
their  free  and  easy  days,  taking  it  as  evidence  that  their 
wives  are  attractive.4 

It  is  safe  to  conclude,  from  the  evidence  presented,  that 
in  early  Semitic  life  a  combined  polyaudiyuuid  polygamy, 

1  See  Giddings's  Principles  of  Sociology,  p.  271. 

a  See  Lev.  2017- 18,  Qur'an  4^,  Yaqut,  Vol.  IV,  p.  620,  and  Robertson 
Smith's  discussion,  Kinship,  p.  162  ff. 

8  Wellhausen  holds  also  that  Arabic  endogamy  was  preceded  by  exog- 
amy ;  see  Nachrichten  d.  kgl.  Gesell.  d.  Wiss.  zu  Gott.,  1893,  pp.  473  ff. 

*  See  Wilken's  Matriarchaat,  p.  24,  and  Spencer's  Principles  of  Soci- 
ology, Vol.  I,  p.  617. 


64  SEMITIC  ORIGINS 


approaching  the  Nair  type,  but  originally  exogamous,  ex- 
isted. It  has,  however,  passed  away,  leaving  few  results 
behind  it  which  might  not  have  been  produced  by  a  system 
of  temporary  marriage,  combined  with  a  large  degree  of 
that  sexual  laxity  which  exists  among  all  peoples,  in 
greater  or  less  degree,  but  which  among  the  early  Semites 
was  regarded  as  a  religious  duty. 

Of  the  Thibetan  type  of  polyandry  we  have  more  abun- 
dant evidence.  The  most  striking  is  the  passage  in  Strabo's 
description  of  Arabia  Felix,  often  quoted  by  writers  in 
recent  years : 1  "All  the  kindred  have  property  in  common, 
the  eldest  being  lord;  all  have  one  wife,  and  it  is  first 
come  first  served,  the  man  who  enters  to  her  leaving  at 
the  door  the  stick  which  it  is  customary  for  every  one  to 
carry;  but  the  night  she  spends  with  the  eldest.  Hence, 
all  are  brothers  of  all;  they  also  have  conjugal  intercourse 
with  mothers ; 2  an  adulterer  is  punished  with  death ;  an 
adulterer  is  a  man  of  another  stock."  This  passage  is 
strong  testimony  of  the  existence  in  Yemen  of  fraternal 
polyandry  of  the  Thibetan  type.  It  has  recently  been  con- 
firmed by  the  testimony  of  inscriptions  brought  from  the 
same  region.  Glaser  stated,  in  1897,  that  he  had  epi- 
graphic  evidence  of  polyandry,  or  communal  marriage, 
among  the  Sabaeans,3  and  Winckler,  in  the  next  year, 
pointed  out  that  in  a  Minsean  inscription  published  by 
HaleVy,  the  genealogy  demonstrated  a  fraternal  polyandry.4 
The  evidence  for  this  type  of  marriage  for  Yemen  is  there- 
fore indisputable. 

The  late  Robertson  Smith  collected  considerable  evi- 
dence to  show  that  this  type  of  polyandry  was  also  known 

1  Strabo,  Bk.  XVI,  ch.  4,  p.  783. 

2  This  is  probably  not  to  be  taken  literally,  but  to  be  explained  by 
Qur'an  426,  where  it  appears  that  men  had  married  wives  of  their  fathers. 
Cf.  Robertson  Smith  in  Journal  of  Philology,  Vol.  IX,  p.  86,  n.  2. 

8  See  his  note  "  Polyandrie  oder  Gesellschaftschen  bei  den  alten  Saba- 
ern"  in  the  Beilagen  of  Allgemeine  Zeitung,  Miinchen,  December  6, 1897. 

4  "  Die  Polyandrie  bei  den  Minaern,"  in  Winckler's  Altorientalische 
Forschungen,  2te  Reihe,  Vol.  I,  pp.  81-83. 


PRIMITIVE  SEMITIC   SOCIAL  LIFE  66 

in  North  Arabia  and  in  other  parts  of  the  Semitic  territory. 
His  arguments  are:  (1)  Bokhari  relates  that  two  men 
made  a  covenant  of  brotherhood,  which  resulted  in  their 
sharing  their  goods  and  wives,  —  a  fact  which  would  seem 
to  show  a  survival  of  a  custom  of  fraternal  polyandry.1 
(2)  In  Arabia  kanna  means  the  wife  of  a  son  or  brother, 
but  is  used  also  to  denote  one's  own  wife.  In  Hebrew 
kdlldh  means  both  betrothed  and  daughter-in-law;  while 
in  Syriac  kalthd  means  both  bride  and  daughter-in-law. 
These  facts  can  be  explained  most  easily  as  remnants  of 
fraternal  polyandry.2  (3)  The  Arabic  law  that  a  man  has 
the  first  right  to  the  hand  of  his  cousin,  as  well  as  the  fact 
which  the  4th  Sura  of  the  Qur'an  and  its  attendant  tra- 
ditions attest,  that  in  case  a  man  died  and  left  only  female 
children,  the  father's  male  relatives  inherited  his  property 
and  married  his  daughters,  are  regarded  as  the  results  of 
a  previously  existing  polyandrous  condition  of  society  like 
that  described  by  Strabo.3  (4)  The  Qur'an  (j^)  forbids 
men  to  inherit  women  against  their  will,  and  forbids  (426) 
them  to  take  their  step-mothers  in  marriage  "  except  what 
has  passed."  This  is  regarded  as  evidence  that  down  to 
the  time  of  Mohammed  these  attendant  circumstances  of 
polyandry  had  continued,  and  that  the  prophet  did  not 
dare  to  annul  existing  unions,  though  he  forbade  such 
marriages  in  the  future.* 

The  last  two  points  quoted  from  Smith  may  not  at  first 
sight  seem  to  be  valid  arguments,  but  a  little  consid- 
eration of  the  circumstances  which  would  inevitably 
attend  polyandry  of  this  sort,  and  the  transition  from 
it  to  polygamy,  will  vindicate  their  character.  In  fraternal 
polyandry  the  oldest  brother  is  the  head  of  the  family, 
and  the  wife  is,  or  in  time  becomes,  the  property  of  the 

1  Kinship,  p.  136. 

3  Ibid.,  p.  136.     I  have  modified  the  statements  slightly  in  quoting 
because,  in  the  form  in  which  Smith  made  them,  they  are  not  lexically 
defensible. 

8  Ibid.,  pp.  138,  139. 

4  Ibid.,  pp.  86,  87. 


66  SEMITIC   ORIGINS 


group  of  brothers.  In  case  the  oldest  brother  dies,  the 
next  in  age  succeeds  to  his  prerogatives  and  to  his  larger 
claim  on  the  wife.  Thus,  the  idea  is  established  that 
inheritance  carries  with  it  not  only  rights  of  property,  but 
marital  rights  as  well.  Endogamous  customs  of  marriage 
extend  this  idea.  A  man  comes  to  think  of  his  paternal 
cousin  as  by  right  his  wife,  so  that  the  conception  of  in- 
heriting women  is  strengthened  and  extends.  Under  this 
system  of  polyandry  the  conception  of  male  kinship  grows 
up  and  is  firmly  established,  so  that  when  polygamy  suc- 
ceeds polyandry  the  social  soil  is  prepared  for  such  cus- 
toms as  those  urged  by  Smith  as  evidences  of  polyandry. 
In  this  connection  Smith  also,  following  in  the  footsteps 
I  of  McLennan,  urged  that  the  Levirate  custom  of  marrying 
I  the  wife  of  a  dead  brother  to  raise  up  seed  to  him,  of  which 
we  have  such  a  beautiful  idyl  in  Ruth  3,  4,  of  which  he 
also  found  traces  in  Arabia,1  and  which  still  exists  in 
Abyssinia,2  was  an  outgrowth  of  fraternal  polyandry.  It 
seemed  to  him  and  McLennan  that  no  one  would  have 
thought  of  counting  the  son  of  one  brother  as  the  son  of 
another,  if  previously  the  sons  had  not  been  the  property 
of  all  in  common.  Spencer,  Starcke,  and  Westermarck 
have  all  contested  this  position.  Spencer  suggests  that 
it  is  one  of  the  results  of  inheriting  women  as  one  would 
inherit  other  property;8  to  which  Starcke  justly  replies 
that  this  view  leaves  unexplained  the  real  point  of  the 
custom,  the  counting  of  the  children  as  the  offspring  of 
the  dead  brother.  Starcke4  and  Westermarck5  point  out 
that  the  Levirate,  or  institutions  of  a  similar  character, 
have  existed  in  many  parts  of  the  world  where  there  was 
no  suspicion  of  polyandry,  and  that  therefore  another 
explanation  must  be  sought.  That  which  they  offer  is 

1  Kinship,  p.  87. 

2  Letourneau's  Evolution  of  Marriage,  p.  265. 
8  Principles  of  Sociology,  Vol.  I,  p.  661. 

*  The  Primitive  Family,  pp.  157,  158,  and  the  International  Journal 
of  Ethics,  Vol.  Ill,  p.  465. 

5  The  History  of  Human  Marriage,  pp.  510-514. 


PRIMITIVE   SEMITIC  SOCIAL  LIFE  67 

that  in  primitive  communities  the  idea  of  fatherhood  is 
juridical,  and  not  based  on  actual  fatherhood,  and  that 
this  fact,  combined  with  the  desire  to  keep  intact  the 
dead  man's  estate,  produced  the  institution  in  question. 
The  view  of  Letourneau,1  that  the  Levirate,  though  not 
necessarily  produced  by  polyandry,  is  practised  under  a 
polyandiic  regime,  seems  to  come  nearer  to  the  truth. 
Possibly  other  customs  and  causes  may  have  sometimes 
produced  an  institution  of  a  similar  character;  but  when 
we  find  absolutely  certain  evidence  of  the  existence  of 
fraternal  polyandry,  such  as  we  have  for  south  Arabia,  it 
is  but  fair  to  interpret  an  institution  which  grows,  as 
we  have  seen,  so  naturally  out  of  polyandry,  as  evi- 
dence of  its  existence  in  another  branch  of  the  Semitic 
race. 

The  explanations  which  Starcke  and  Westermarck  give 
of  the  Levirate  seem  inadequate  in  two  respects :  (1)  They 
leave  unexplained  why  any  one  should  desire  to  keep  the 
dead  brother's  estate  intact,  when  it  would  be  for  the  self- 
interest  of  till  the  other  brothers  to  have  it  divided;  and 
(2)  they  assume  that  in  all  parts  of  the  world  similar  insti- 
tutions must  be  produced  by  identical  causes.  Let  it  be 
granted  that  polyandry  does  not  offer  a  complete  explana- 
tion of  why  seed  should  be  desired  for  an  individual 
brother,  McLennan's  contention  that  it  did  so  is  still  so 
far  valid,  that  it  may  be  said  that  polyandry  supplies 
some  probable  cause,  while  the  juridical  theory  affords 
none.  It  is  not  for  an  outsider  to  fight  the  battles  of  the 
sociologists,  but  to  me  it  seems  more  scientific  to  study 
ench  institution  in  the  light  of  its  antecedents  and  envi- 
ronment, than  to  heap  instances  together  from  every  quar- 
ter of  the  globe,  and  assume  that  because  their  external 
character  is  similar  one  cause  must  have  produced  them 
all.  Studied  in  the  light  of  the  characteristics  of  the 
Semitic  race,  we  may  still  hold  that  for  them  the  presence 
of  the  Levirate  system  argues  a  previous  polyandric  con- 
1  Tlie  Evolution  of  Marriage,  p.  265. 


68  SEMITIC   ORIGINS 


dition.  This  is  the  opinion  of  Wellhausen,1  Buhl,2  and 
Benzinger,3  all  of  whom  recognize  that  back  of  Arabic  and 
Hebrew  life,  as  we  know  it,  there  lay  a  condition  of 
polyandry. 

It  is  in  this  type  of  polyandry,  where  the  wife  is  the 
recipient  of  the  favors  of  all  the  brothers,  that  the  indi- 
vidual father  may  not  be  known.  It  is  always  known  that 
a  child  is  connected  with  a  certain  paternal  stock,  but 
which  one  of  the  brothers  begat  him  is  a  matter  of  doubt. 
This  led  Robertson  Smith  to  point  out4  that  the  Semitic 
word  abu  must  have  originally  meant  "nourisher,"  not 
procreator,  and  that  in  fraternal  polyandry  it  must  have 
been  applied  to  the  elder  brother.  It  thus  acquired  the 
value  of  "husband"  before  it  had  the  value  of  "father," 
and  is  actually  employed  in  the  former  sense  by  Jere- 
miah (ch.  34).  This  observation  led  me  to  point  out 6  that 
in  a  Babylonian  contract,  which  dates  from  more  than  two 
thousand  years  B.C.,  the  word  abu  is  also  used  in  the  sense 
of  "husband."  This  affords  us  at  least  one  trace  of  this 
system  in  Babylonia.  It  seems  safe,  therefore,  to  con- 
clude that  this  type  of  polyandry  began  before  the  disper- 
sion of  the  Semitic  nations,  or  was  developed  by  similar 
circumstances,  or  was  carried  by  later  emigrants  from 
Arabia  to  the  other  nations.  It  seems  probable  that  it 
was  developed  before  the  later  separations  from  the  parent 
stock  occurred,  and  if  not  before  the  earliest,  it  was  carried 
to  those  countries  by  later  migrations. 


1  Cf.  Nachrichten  d.  kgl.  Gesell.  d.  Wiss.  zu  Gott.,  1893,  pp.  460  ft., 
474  ff.,  and  479  ff. 

2  Die  sociale  Verhaltnisse  der  Israeliten,  von  Franz  Buhl,  Berlin,  1899, 
p.  28  ff. 

8  Hebraische  Archceologie,  Leipzig,  1894,  p.  134. 

*  Kinship,  pp.  117,  134.  Cf.  also  my  article,  "The  Kinship  of  Gods 
and  Men  among  the  Early  Semites,"  in  JBL.,  Vol.  XV,  especially 
p.  181  ff. 

6  See  my  "  Note  on  Meissner's  Altbabylonische  Privatrecht,  No.  7,"  in 
JAOS.,  Vol.  XX,  p.  326.  The  point  of  the  article  is  that  in  line  24  of  this 
tablet  a  woman's  father  is  called  her  a&«,  while  in  line  28  her  husband  is 


PRIMITIVE  SEMITIC  SOCIAL  LIFE  69 

Of  British  polyandry,  or  communal  marriage  (the  mar- 
riage of  a  group  of  women  to  a  group  of  men),  there  is 
not,  so  far  as  I  know,  much  evidence.  Euting l  describes 
a  caravan  which  he  saw  on  its  way  from  Haur&n  to  Kaf, 
which  contained  170  men  and  more  than  20  young  women. 
This  suggests  the  possibility  that  in  the  exigencies  of 
caravan  life  communal  unions  may  have  been  formed. 
Dozy  2  cites  a  case  which  occurred  under  Omar  I,  where  an 
old  Arab  gave  to  a  young  one  a  share  in  his  wife,  in  return 
for  which  the  young  man  was  to  do  gardening  for  him ;  and 
when  reproved  for  it,  both  men  professed  to  be  ignorant 
that  they  were  acting  contrary  to  law.  This  was,  of  course, 
not  communal  marriage,  but  it  indicates  a  point  of  view 
which  would  make  it  possible,  for  convenience,  to  produce 
such  unions.  If  this  type  of  marriage  ever  existed  among 
the  Semites,  it  has  left  behind  no  sure  traces  of  itself. 

Having  established  the  existence  of  Thibetan  polyandry, 
as  well  as  that  of  the  Nair  type,  we  must  inquire  into 
their  relation  to  one  another.  Smith  held3  that  Thibetan 
polyandry  was  a  transition  stage  from  the  maternal  to  the 
paternal  family.  As  has  been  pointed  out,4  the  Nair  type 
of  polyandry  is  consistent  with  the  conditions  of  very  early 
Semitic  life,  when  marriage  was  exogamous.  The  type 
of  polyandry  described  by  Strabo  could  only  be  introduced, 
as  endogamous  Nair  polyandry  could  be,6  when  these  con- 
ditions were  breaking  up,  when  totemism  was  losing  its 
hold,  and  endogamy  had  taken  the  place  of  exogamy. 
Smith  also  claims  6  that  the  capture  of  women,  of  which 
there  is  abundant  evidence,7  had  an  important  influence  in 

also  called  her  abn,  showing  that  the  word  was  used  in  the  same  elastic 
manner  as  it  is  in  Jeremiah. 

1  Tagbuch  einer  Reise  in  Inner-Arabien,  Leiden,  1896,  p.  38. 

2  Histoire  des  Musselmans  tfEspagne,  par  R.  Dozy,  Leiden,  1861, 
Vol.  I,  p.  36. 

8  Kinship,  p.  144  ft.  6  See  above,  p.  57. 

*  Above,  p.  63  ff.  6  Kinship,  pp.  74,  75. 

7  See  also  Wellhausen,  Nachrichten  d.  kgl.  Gesell.  d.  Wiss.  zu  Gott., 
1893,  p.  473. 


70  SEMITIC   ORIGINS 


developing  it.  The  sons  of  such  women  were,  as  Arabian 
poets  declare,  brought  up  with  their  father's  tribe.  The 
mother  could  not  dismiss  her  husband  at  will,  as  in  the 
older  mot'a  marriage,  but  became  subject  to  his  power. 
This  power  over  her  was  sweet;  and  the  advantage  of 
having  their  children  to  themselves,  and  not  being  com- 
pelled to  abandon  them  to  the  tribe  of  the  mother,  appealed 
to  them.  But  women  were  not  always  to  be  captured; 
often,  too,  the  conditions  of  life  were  too  hard  to  allow  of 
the  support  of  more  than  one  in  a  whole  family  of  brothers, 
so  the  feeling  against  letting  the  children  of  sons  go  out 
of  the  tribe  would  of  course  nurture  the  older  feeling  that 
the  children  of  the  daughters  were  members  of  it ;  and  thus 
gradually  marriage  with  a  kinswoman  took,  for  the  most 
part,  the  place  of  extra-tribal,  or  clan  marriages. 

While  the  forces  which  transformed  Nair  polyandry  into 
that  of  the  Thibetan  type  may  have  been,  in  part,  those 
which  Smith  supposed,  there  were  other  economic  reasons 
which,  in  Arabia,  must  have  had  a  tendency  to  act  in  this 
direction  from  the  beginning.  It  is  clear  from  Keasbey's 
analysis  of  the  clan  organization,  with  which  this  chapter 
opened,  that  the  matriarchal  clans,  which  we  have  in  the 
subsequent  discussion  proven  to  exist,  must  have  had  their 
habitat  in  the  oases  of  Arabia.  There  the  women  and 
the  weaker  men  would  remain,  thither  other  men  would 
from  time  to  time  repair,  there  Nair  polyandry  would  be 
practised,  and  there  woman  would  be  held  in  the  high 
esteem  in  which  we  have  shown  her  to  have  been  regarded 
in  Arabia.  Such  was  the  Arabic  communal  clan ;  and  to 
it  most  of  the  evidence  collected  above  applies. 

From  the  beginning,  however,  there  must  have  been  a 
tendency  to  the  republican  clan.  Expeditions  into  the 
desert  with  the  flocks  in  search  of  pasturage,  or  caravans 
from  place  to  place  for  the  purposes  of  trade,  would  con- 
sist, as  did  the  one  which  Euting  saw,  of  a  considerable 
number  of  men  and  a  much  smaller  number  of  women. 
This  would,  from  the  beginning,  have  a  tendency  toward 


PRIMITIVE   SEMITIC   SOCIAL   LIFE  71 

the  formation  of  clans  in  which  polyandry  of  the  Thibetan 
or  British  type  would  prevail.  The  women  of  the  wealthy 
Arabians  of  the  oases  who  to-day  accompany  their  hus- 
bands on  their  expeditions  into  the  desert  are  as  a  rule 
those  of  lower  social  position.  A  princess  in  a  harem  may 
have  it  understood  that  she  is  to  remain  always  in  the 
oasis.1  Probably  it  was  so  in  ancient  times.  Such  a  band 
of  men  would  take  with  them  some  daring  young  women, 
who  had  not  much  position  at  home,  or  who  were  captives 
from  another  tribe.  In  such  clans,  where  the  men  were 
the  most  important  element,  and  where  Thibetan  or  British 
polyandry  would  be  almost  certain,  there  would  be  a  ten- 
dency from  the  beginning  to  count  the  children  to  the 
father's  stock.  The  men  of  such  clans,  like  some  mod- 
ern sailors,  would  be  certain,  too,  to  have  mistresses  in 
every  oasis  which  they  visited;  so  that,  while  they  formed 
an  important  element  in  the  social  life  of  that  Nair  type 
which  we  have  traced  above  as  the  prevailing  type  among 
the  primitive  Semites,  they  might  also,  in  their  own 
migratory  clans,  have  been  laying  the  foundation  of 
Thibetan  polyandry  and  paternal  kinship. 

The  evidence  passed  in  review  goes  to  show  that  in  the 
most  primitive  times  this  tendency  did  not  make  itself 
much  felt.  The  reason  why  it  did  not  is  obvious.  Arabia 
is  such  a  poor  country,  outside  the  oases,  that  the  life  of 
the  people  is  practically  bound  up  in  these  fertile  spots. 
For  a  long  time  these  adventurous  bands  were  too  depen- 
dent upon  the  oases,  and  too  much  overshadowed  by  their 
more  numerous  population,  to  make  any  marked  impress 
on  the  social  order.  As  trade  increased,  however,  and 
the  population,  through  numbers,  was  in  places  crowded 
out  permanently  into  the  desert,  such  clans  would  become 
more  permanent;  and  thus  clans  practising  Thibetan 

1  Cf.  Blunt,  Pilgrimage  to  Nejd,  Vol.  I,  p.  232.  Only  one  of  the  three 
wives  of  the  emir  of  Hail  at  the  time  of  Lady  Blunt's  visit  was  bound  to 
accompany  her  lord  on  his  expeditions  into  the  desert.  The  other  two, 
who  never  left  the  oasis,  looked  down  on  this  one  as  an  inferior. 


72  SEMITIC   ORIGINS 


polyandry  and  counting  kinship  through  the  father  might 
be  produced  from  economic  causes.1  Wars  would  of  course 
be  produced  as  a  part  of  this  process,  so  that  marriage  by 
capture  may  have  been  one  element  of  the  transformation ; 
but  the  economic  element  was  probably  earlier,  and  equally 
prominent. 

By  these  factors  fraternal  polyandry  was  produced. 
Wellhausen2  ascribes  to  this  feeling  for  one's  tribe  alone 
the  change  from  exogamy  to  endogamy.  Fraternal  poly- 
andry adapts  itself  to  a  very  poor  country;3  and  where 
the  murder  of  female  children  is  added  to  the  conditions 
just  described,  it  would  seem  to  be  the  inevitable  result 
of  the  situation. 

The  restraint  which  this  type  of  polyandry  imposed  on 
men  must  always  have  been  exceedingly  irksome  to  those 
who  possessed  the  Semitic  nature;  and  with  them  the 
natural  result  would  be  that,  whenever  plenty  permitted 
the  support  of  more  women,  and  other  circumstances  threw 
more  of  them  into  their  power,  polyandry  would  give  place 
to  polygamy.  This  is  what  occurred  whenever  Semites 
went  into  countries  more  fertile  than  Arabia.  We  find,  as 
we  have  seen,  here  and  there  traces  of  a  previous  polyandry ; 
but  wherever  circumstances  permitted  it  has  given  place  to 
polygamy,  whether  among  Arabs,  Babylonians,  or  Hebrews. 

Hilderbrand,  who  has  made  a  careful  study  of  the  family 
type  found  among  peoples  who  live  by  hunting,  fishing,  or 
as  shepherds  and  agriculturists,  lays  it  down  as  a  general 
law  that,  "  Among  people  who  are  in  the  lowest  stages  of 
domestic  development,  we  never  and  nowhere  meet  with 
promiscuity  or  community  in  women."4  This  statement, 

1  Such  clans  seem  to  exist  in  Arabia  to-day  and  to  have  an  organiza- 
tion of  their  own.     Samn,  or  melted  butter,  the  produce  of  their  flocks, 
is  their  chief  article  of  exchange.     Cf.  Doughty,  Arabia  Deserta,  Vol.  II, 
pp.  71,  206-207,  209,  267,  268,  281,  289,  457. 

2  Op.  cit.,  p.  437  ff. 

8  Cf.  Spencer's  Principles  of  Sociology,  Vol.  I,  p.  659. 
4  "  Bei  Volkern,  welche  sich  noch  auf  der  untersten  wirtschaftlichen 
Stufe  befinden,  begegnen  wir  niemals  und  nirgens  einem  Zustande  der 


PRIMITIVE   SEMITIC   SOCIAL  LIFE  73 

I  am  told  by  good  authorities  in  sociology,  may  be  taken 
as  authoritative.  He  also  tells  us  that,  "  The  purchase  of 
wives  is  first  found  among  peoples  who  have  already 
reached  the  condition  of  shepherd  or  agricultural  life,  and 
individual  property  in  land.  Also,  marriage  by  capture 
is  first  frequently  found  in  this  stage  of  development."1 
In  like  manner,  with  reference  to  polyandry,  he  deduces 
from  the  cases  he  has  observed  this  law,  "  Among  peoples 
who  have  already  reached  the  shepherd  or  agricultural 
stage  of  development  and  have  individual  property  in 
land,  we  not  seldom  find  the  phenomena  that  a  number  of 
brothers  or  kinsmen  possess  one  wife  in  common,  or  even 
individuals  live  in  complete  celibacy."2  Similarly,  Gid- 
dings  remarks,  "  The  polyandrian  family  is  found  in  very 
many  parts  of  the  world,  usually  in  tribes  that  have  passed 
beyond  savagery  into  barbarism."3 

If,  now,  we  apply  the  laws  deduced  by  these  students 
of  sociology  to  the  ancient  Semites,  a  part  of  the  observa- 
tions already  made  are  confirmed,  and,  in  some  respects, 
our  knowledge  of  the  earlier  prehistoric  period  of  Semitic 
residence  in  Arabia  is  advanced.  Hilderbrand's  laws 
confirm  our  view  that  the  Thibetan  type  of  polyandry  is  a 
comparatively  late  development;  but  they  also  lead  us  to 
suspect  that  when  the  Semites  separated  from  their  Ham- 
itic  brethren  of  North  Africa,  they  had  already  passed 
beyond  the  lowest  stages  of  social  culture,  since  all  our 
data  point  to  a  sexual  looseness  for  the  primitive  Semite 

Frauengemeinschaft  oder  Promiscuitat."  See  JKecht  und  Sitte,  etc., 
p.  11. 

1  "  Der  Sitte  des  Frauenkaufs  begegnen  wir  ernst  bei  Volkern,  welche 
schon  auf  der  Stufe  des  Hirtenlebens  oder  aber  des  Ackerbaues  und 
Grundeigentums  stehen.     Und  auch  der  Frauenraub  konnnt  erst  auf 
diesen  Stufen  haufiger  vor."     Op.  cit.,  p.  9. 

2  "  Erst  bei  Volkern,  welche  schon  auf  der  Stufe  des  Hirtenlebens 
oder  aber  des  Ackerbaues  und  Grundeigentums  stehen,  stossen  wir  nicht 
selten  auf  die  Erscheinung,  dass  haufig  mehrere  Briider  oder  Verwandte 
eine  Frau  gemeinsam  besitzen,  oder  sogar  Einzelne  in  einem  Zustande 
vollkoramener  Ehelosigkeit  leben."     Op.  cit.,  p.  13. 

8  Principles  of  Sociology,  p.  155. 


74  SEMITIC   ORIGINS 


which  borders  upon  promiscuity.  This  observation  is  con- 
firmed by  two  considerations:  (1)  There  are  certain  fea- 
tures in  the  Egyptian,  as  well  as  in  the  Semitic,  religion, 
which  point  to  a  previous  condition  of  polyandry ; l  and 
it  is  possible  that  the  institution  was  developed  before  the 
separation  of  the  Semites  from  the  Karaites.  (2)  The 
conditions  of  life  in  Arabia  and,  to  a  certain  extent,  in 
North  Africa  outside  of  Egj^pt,  where,  as  in  Arabia,  there 
are  many  deserts  with  occasional  oases,  are  such  that  no 
people  could  live  long  by  hunting  and  fishing.  The  first 
of  these  considerations  will  be  more  fully  discussed  in  the 
next  chapter,  but  to  the  second  some  space  may  be  devoted 
here. 

Fishing  could  never  have  been  an  important  feature  of 
life  in  Arabia  except  upon  the  sea  coasts,  for  the  absence 
of  large  rivers,  and  indeed,  except  in  the  oases,  of  water 
of  any  sort,  would  render  it  impossible.  Hunting  has, 
down  to  the  present  time,  played  some  part  in  Arabian 
life.  Hares,  wild  goats,  gazelles,  wild  cows,  and  ostriches 
may  still  be  found  in  small  numbers;  and  the  Solluby 
tribe,  who  have  no  real  home,  but  pay  tribute  to  all  the 
tribes,  still  live  largely  by  hunting.2  If  the  theory  of 
Wallace,3  that  this  region  once  contained  larger  forests 
and  more  abundant  water,  be  true,  it  can  only  have  been 
many,  many  centuries  ago.  Probably  the  camel  and  goat, 
to  which  he  ascribes  the  destruction  of  the  forests,  were 
in  Arabia  before  the  Semites  were.  It  is  tolerably  cer- 
tain that,  since  the  Semites  entered  it,  the  conditions  of 
the  peninsula  have  been  practically  what  they  are  to-day. 
Here  and  there  oases  are  found  where  a  little  water  pro- 
duces grass,  trees,  and  vegetation,  but  in  many  of  these 
nothing  of  importance  is  produced  without  irrigation.4 

1  Cf.  Maspero's  Dawn  of  Civilization,  New  York,  1897,  p.  60  ff. 

2  See  Doughty 's  Arabia  Deserta,  Vol.  I,  pp.  281  ff.,  362  fl.,  487  ff., 
Vol.  II,  pp.  9  ff.,  70,  and  216-218. 

8  See  above,  p.  26. 

4  On  Arabian  oases,  cf.  Wellsted's  Travels  in  Arabia,  Vol.  I,  pp.  92  ff. 
and  272  ff. ;  Palgrave's  Central  and  Eastern  Arabia,  Vol.  I,  pp.  20,  48  ff., 


PRIMITIVE  SEMITIC   SOCIAL  LIFE  76 

Here  and  there,  however,  palms  grow  without  artificial 
watering.1  Much  of  the  country  is  covered  with  volcanic 
mountains,  from  which  protrude  bare  crags  of  igneous 
rocks,  and  which  produce  almost  no  vegetation.  The  inter- 
vening plains  are  covered  with  dry  gravel,  which  is 
exceedingly  unproductive,  while  between  the  central  and 
eastern  portions  of  the  peninsula  there  extend  immense 
deserts  of  shifting  sand.2  The  lack  of  water  and  the 
intense  heat  must  have  always  made  it  difficult  for  savage 
man  to  venture  far  from  a  spring.  It  is  clear  that  in  such 
a  country  no  large  population  could  live  by  hunting;  the 
game  itself  would  find  the  conditions  of  life  too  severe  to 
exist  in  large  quantities.  The  Semite  must  have  been 
compelled  to  domesticate  the  goat  and  camel  at  an  early 
date,  in  order  to  obtain  the  milk  which  is  so  important  a 
part  of  Arabian  diet.  The  date  palm,  which  extended, 
so  Fischer  and  Hehn  declare,3  in  prehistoric  times,  from 
the  Canaries  to  Pen  jab,  and  which  now  produces  the  staple 
article  of  diet  of  so  much  of  the  Arabian  population,  must 
have  early  revealed  its  virtues  to  the  Semitic  mind,  and 
thus  called  forth  Semitic  ingenuity  for  its  cultivation.4 

258  ff.,  Vol.  II,  p.  360 ;  Blunt's  Pilgrimage  to  Nejd,  Vol.  I,  p.  113 ;  and 
Euting's  Tagbnch  einer  Beise  in  Inner-Arabien,  pp.  68,  121,  123  £E. 

1  See  Dough ty's  Arabia  Deserta,  Vol.  II,  p.  10,  and  Theobald  Fischer 
in  Petennann's  Mittheilungen,  Erganzungsband  XIV,  No.  64,  p.  10. 

2  Cf.  Wellsted,  op.  cit.,  Vol.  I,  p.  241 ;    Palgrave,  op.  cit.,  Vol.  II, 
pp.  132  ff.,  136  ff.,  153,  356-358 ;  Blunt,  op.  cit.,  Vol.  I,  pp.  67,  156-185  ; 
Doughty,  op.  cit.,  Vol.  I,  pp.  419-422,  424,  425;  and  Euting,  op.  cit., 
p.  142  ff. 

8  See  Theobald  Fischer  in  Petermann's  Mittheilungen,  Erganzungs- 
band XIV,  No.  64,  p.  1,  and  Hehn's  Culturpflanzen  und  Hausthiere,  Oth 
ed.,  p.  273. 

4  There  should  be  no  real  doubt  that  the  date-palm  was  known  to  the 
primitive  Semites  in  ancient  Arabia.  It  extended  in  prehistoric  times 
from  the  Canaries  to  Penjab  (see  Hehn's  Culttirpjlanzen  und  Hausthiere. 
6th  ed.,  p.  273),  or  "from  the  Atlantic  to  the  Himalayas"  (so  Theobald 
Fischer,  in  Petennann's  Mittheilungen,  Erganzungsband,  XIV,  No.  64, 
p.  l),and  "belonged  to  the  desert  and  oasis  peoples  of  the  Semites" 
(  Hehn,  op  cit.,  p.  263).  This  fact  was  doubted  by  von  Kremer  and  Guidi, 
as  noted  above  in  ch.  i.  on  linguistic  grounds,  but  without  sufficient  reason. 


76  SEMITIC   ORIGINS 


Thus  in  Arabia,  as  has  so  often  been  the  case  in  other 
countries  where  the  conditions  of  life  are  hard,  necessity 
compelled  man  at  an  early  period  to  form  a  somewhat 
advanced,  social  organization.  The  conditions  in  which 
such  relations  between  the  sexes  as  we  have  described 

It  is  true  the  Semitic  tongues  have  no  common  word  for  palm  ;  it  is  gis- 
himmaru  in  Babylonian  and  Assyrian,  diqld  in  Aramaic,  tamar  in  Hebrew, 
nakhlu"  in  Arabic,  and  tamrt  in  Ethiopia ;  but  as  we  pointed  out  above 
(p.  22),  Bertin  has  correctly  observed  (Journal  of  the  Anthropological 
Institute,  Vol.  XI,  pp.  423-433),  that  it  is  the  animals  and  plants  which 
are  most  common  which  always  have  the  most  names,  and  that  some  of 
these  may  have  survived  in  one  dialect  and  others  in  others.  It  will  be 
noticed  that  the  Hebrew  and  Ethiopia  words  for  palm  tree  are  identical. 
Such  a  resemblance  in  two  such  widely  separated  dialects  of  the  North 
and  South  Semites  shows,  as  Hommel  long  ago  pointed  out  {Die  Namen 
der  Saugthiere,  p.  412),  that  this  word  was  the  name  of  it  in  the  primitive 
Semitic  tongue.  This  is  confirmed  by  the  fact  that  in  Arabic  tamr  means 
"  date,"  and  then  " fruit "  in  general,  while  tamara  means  to  "feed  with 
dates."  The  use  of  tamr  as  date  must  have  been  a  specialization  of  the 
term  for  palm,  when  nakhlun,  the  word  for  "  tree,"  was  narrowed  to 
mean  "palm  tree."  That  nakhlun,  the  more  general  term,  could  be 
'>  narrowed  to  the  palm  shows  that  that  was  the  tree  par  excellence.  The 
jBabylo-Assyrian  term  is  apparently  borrowed  from  a  noil-Semitic 
people.  Whence  the  Aramaic  daqld  came,  it  is  not  easy  to  say.  Yaqut 
(in  his  Geographical  Dictionary,  Vol.  II,  p.  580)  speaks  of  a  place,  Daqala, 
in  south  Arabia.  "  where  date  palms  are  found,"  which  would  show  that 
this  term  was  also  used  in  Sabsea.  Perhaps  it  is  this  fact  which  led 
Robertson  Smith  to  say  (Religion  of  the  Semites,  23.  ed.,  p.  109),  that 
the  date-palm  was  introduced  into  Arabia  from  Yemen  and  Syria, — a 
statement  impossible  of  proof.  Surely  the  word  daqld  is  not  proof.  One 
could  more  plausibly  prove  from  tamr  that  it  was  introduced  from  Pales- 
tine and  Ethiopia,  which  would  surely  be  false.  Hommel,  when  he  wrote 
Die  Namen  der  Saugthiere,  held  that  the  date  palm  was  a  native  of 
Babylonia,  but  now  says  that  it  was  introduced  thither  from  Arabia 
(Hastings's  Dictionary  of  the  Bible,  Vol.  I,  p.  214).  It  is  much  more 
likely,  as  Hehn  says,  that  the  palm  was  native  throughout  all  North 
Africa  and  Southwestern  Asia.  The  culture  of  it  would  probably  arise 
first  in  an  oasis  country  like  Arabia,  and  may  have  been  introduced 
thence  to  Babylonia,  as  Hommel  believes,  and  also  to  Egypt,  as  Hehn 
thinks  (op.  cit.,  p.  274).  Theobald  Fischer,  the  scholar  who  has  most 
thoroughly  investigated  the  date  palm,  holds  that  Arabia  was  the  original 
home  of  its  culture,  and  it  was  thence  introduced  into  Babylonia  and 
Egypt  (op.  cit.,  p.  11).  The  position  taken  in  the  text  is  therefore 
thoroughly  justified. 


PRIMITIVE   SEMITIC  SOCIAL   LIFE  77 

could  exist,  even  if,  with  Hilderbrand  and  Giddings,  we 
recognize  that  they  can  exist  only  in  a  pastoral  and  semi- 
agricultural  life,  must  have  been  present  in  the  peninsula 
not  long,  at  most,  after  the  Semitic  occupation  of  the 
country. 

The  impflrfamffl  nf  flfrq  flftfo  ffftlP*  ^or  ^ne  sustenance  and 
development  of  Semitic  life,  can  hardly  be  overestimated. 
The  palm  leaves  are  to-day  plaited  into  string  mats  and 
baskets,  and  the  bark  into  ropes.  The  dates  themselves 
form  a  staple  article  of  Arabian  diet,  some  of  the  people 
having  almost  no  other  source  of  sustenance ; J  they  are 
exported  as  far  as  Damascus  and  Baghdad,2  and  in  return 
the  Arabs  are  able  to  obtain  a  few  articles  from  the  out- 
side world.  The  stones  are  ground  and  used  for  the  food 
of  cows,  sheep,  and  camels ; 3  syrup  and  vinegar  are  made 
from  old  dates,  and,  by  some  who  disregard  the  Qur'an, 
a  kind  of  brandy ;  *  and  altogether  the  statement  of  Pal- 
grave  is  not  too  strong :  "  They  are  the  bread  of  the  land, 
the  staff  of  life,  and  the  staple  of  commerce."  6  They  still 
serve,  in  some  parts  of  Arabia,  as  the  standard  of  value, 
as  cattle  do  among  shepherd  peoples.6  They  cast  a  dense 
shade,  which,  in  contrast  to  the  hot  Arabian  atmosphere, 
must  be  exceedingly  grateful.7  Europeans  regard  the 
dates  as  a  not  altogether  pleasing  staple  of  diet;8  but  in 
a  land  which  produces  so  sparingly  it  is  regarded  as  a 
divine  gift.  An  Arabic  proverb  declares  that  a  good 
housewife  knows  how  to  set  before  her  husband  a  new 

1  Cf.  Doughty,  Arabia  Deserta,  Vol.  I,  p.  148,  Vol.  II,  p.  178. 

a  Central  and  Eastern  Arabia,  Vol.  I,  p.  60. 

8  In  addition  to  the  references  in  the  two  preceding  notes,  cf.  Well- 
sted's  Travels  in  Arabia,  Vol.  I,  pp.  94,  164  ff.,  241,  288  ff.,  Vol.  II, 
pp.  112, 122,  419  ;  Eating's  Tagbucfi  einer  Reise  in  Inner-Arabien,  pp.  52, 
53 ;  Palgrave,  op.  cit.,  Vol.  I,  p.  263  ;  and  Zwemer,  Arabia,  p.  123.  For 
the  statement  about  vinegar  and  brandy,  see  Zwemer. 

«  Ibid. 

6  Central  and  Eastern  Arabia,  Vol.  I,  p.  60. 

6  Doughty,  op.  cit.,  Vol.  I,  p.  332. 

7  Wellsted,  op.  cit.,  Vol.  I,  p.  94. 

8  Palgrave,  op.  cit.,  Vol.  I,  p.  60 ;  and  Doughty,  op.  cit.,  Vol.  I,  p.  148. 


78  SEMITIC   ORIGINS 


preparation  of  date  food  each  day  in  the  month.1  Much 
thought  has  to  be  devoted  to  the  culture  of  the  date  palm 
in  many  places  in  order  to  make  it  grow.  In  many  parts 
of  the  peninsula  it  must  be  irrigated,  and  in  some  parts 
water  for  the  purpose  must  be  conducted  considerable  dis- 
tances.2 The  female  flowers  of  the  date  palm  must  be 
artificially  impregnated  from  the  male  flowers,  unless  a 
male  tree  happens  to  grow  where  the  winds  will  naturally 
carry  the  pollen  to  the  female  flowers.  This  is  now  some- 
times done  by  planting  a  male  tree  in  the  midst  of  the 
female  ones ;  but  even  as  late  as  the  early  part  of  the  pres- 
ent century,  Wellsted  observed  in  the  Sinaitic  peninsula 
an  old  method,  once  perhaps  more  widely  used  in  Arabia, 
of  fastening  a  bunch  of  the  male  flowers  on  a  branch  ex- 
posed to  the  wind,  and  so  placed  that  it  would  disseminate 
the  pollen  over  the  flowers  to  be  fertilized.3  In  Mesopo- 
tamia the  method  which  the  ancient  sculptures  attest,  and 
which  is  still  employed,4  was  to  climb  the  tree  and  sprinkle 
the  pollen  over  the  flowers.  This  insured  the  fertilization 
of  each  flower.  That  this  tree  and  its  culture  played  a 
very  important  part  in  the  development  of  ancient  Semitic 
life  we  may  therefore  well  believe.  Mohammed  is  said 
to  have  addressed  his  followers  thus :  "  Honor  your  pater- 
nal aunt,  the  date  palm.  It  Avas  named  our  paternal  aunt 
because  it  was  created  of  what  was  left  from  the  clay  of 
Adam ;  and  it  resembles  mankind  because  it  stands  upright 
in  figure  and  height,  and  it  distinguishes  between  its  male 
and  female,  and  has  the  peculiarity  (among  plants)  of 
impregnating  the  latter."6  This  high  estimation  of  the 

1  Erdekunde,  von  Carl  Ritter,  Berlin,  1779-1857,  Vol.  XIII,  p.  804. 
Cf.  Zwemer's  Arabia,  p.  123. 

8  Cf.  Wellsted,  op.  cit.,  Vol.  I,  pp.  92-94  ;  Eating,  op.  cit.,  pp.  52,  53 ; 
and  Glaser  in  Mittheilungen  der  vorderasiatische  Gesellschaft,  1897, 
pp.  373-376  and  425. 

8  Wellsted,  op.  cit.,  Vol.  II,  p.  12. 

*  Zwemer's  Arabia,  the  Cradle  of  Islam,  p.  123. 

6  Reported  by  Qazwini  (1203-83,  cf.  Brockelmann's  Geschichtf  der 
arabischen  Literatur,  Bd.  I,  Weimar,  1898,  p.  481).  The  text  is  published 


PRIMITIVE   SEMITIC  SOCIAL  LIFE 


palm  is  confirmed  by  an  Aramaic  inscription  from  Taima, 
which,  though  much  mutilated,  shows  that  a  part  of  the 
fruit  of  a  date  orchard  was  consecrated  to  a  god,1  and  by 
the  further  fact  that  Nakhla,  one  of  the  seats  of  the  wor- 
ship of  the  goddess  Al-Uzza,2  derived  its  name  from  the 
date  palm.  The  connection  of  the  date  palm  with  the 
goddess  will  be  established  in  the  next  chapter,  and  it 
will  there  appear  that  the  part  played  by  this  tree  in  the 
evolution  of  Semitic  civilization  was  of  the  greatest  im- 
portance. Fjscher  declares  that  the  r61e  which  the  Arabic 
people  have  played  in  the  world's  history  is  closely  bound 
up  with  this,  its  sacred  tree.3  If  we  substitute  Semitic 
people  for  Arabic,  the  statement  remains  equally  true. 
We  can  understand,  from  the  economic  value  of  this  tree 
and  from  the  demand  which  its  artificial  propagation  made 
upon  the  Semite,  as  an  increasing  population  made  such 
artificial  culture  necessary,  something  of  the  importance 
it  would  assume  in  his  eyes;  but  to  fully  appreciate  it, 
we  must  learn  the  divine  significance  which  he  attached 
to  it,  the  reflex  of  his  own  social  life  which  he  saw  in  it, 
and  how  he  attributed  to  it  all  his  knowledge,  especially 
the  knowledge  of  sex  and  procreation.  The  social  and 
the  religious  life  of  the  people  are  always  interwoven. 
These  conceptions,  which  are  so  important  for  the  social 
life,  as  well  as  the  religious  feasts,  which  form  so  large 
a  part  of  the  social  intercourse  of  any  people,  will  be 
considered  in  the  next  chapter. 

The  discussion  in  the  present  chapter  has,  I  think, 
made  the  following  points  clear:  The  Semites,  perhaps 

in  S.  de  Sacy's  Chrestomathie  ara&e,  Vol.  Ill,  p.  176,  French  translation, 
Vol.  Ill,  p.  396. 

i  Cf.  C/.S\,  Pt.  II,  Vol.  I,  No.  113. 

8  Cf.  Wellhausen's  Beste  arabische  Heidentums,  2d  ed.,  p.  36;  and 
Hebraica,  Vol.  X,  p.  64. 

s  u  \vjr  konnen  daher  sagen,  das  auch  die  weltgeschichtliche  Rolle, 
welche  das  arabische  Volk  gespielt  hat,  in  engstera  Zuganimenhange  mit 
diesem  seinem  heiligen  Baum  steht."  Petermann's  Mittheilungen,  Ergan- 
zungsband  XIV,  Heft.  64,  p.  10. 


80  SEMITIC  ORIGINS 


as  early  as  the  time  of  their  separation  from  the  Hamites, 
had  reached  the  animistic  stage  of  culture,  and  formed 
totemistic  clans.  Their  family  relations  were  exceed- 
ingly vague.  Marriage  was  for  a  short  term,  women 
resided  in  the  homes  of  their  own  kindred,  and  descent 
was  reckoned  through  them ;  the  killing  of  female  infants 
created  a  paucity  of  women,  which  produced  a  condition 
of  polyandry  resembling  the  Nair  type.  At  the  same 
time  there  was  much  sexual  irregularity,  which  was 
regarded  as  innocent.  Out  of  this  there  grew,  through 
the  formation  of  small .  trading  clans  and  the  influence  of 
the  capture  of  women,  a  system  of  Thibetan  polyandry 
and,  later,  a  system  of  male  kinship.  Perhaps  at  the  time 
of  their  separation  from  the  Hamites,  and  at  all  events 
comparatively  early,  they  had  entered  the  pastoral  and 
semi-agricultural  stage  of  culture,  in  which  the  cultivation 
of  the  date  palm  played  an  important  part. 


CHAPTER  III 

SEMITIC   RELIGIOUS  ORIGINS 

MANY  features  of  the  religion  of  the  primitive  Semitic 
people  were  successfully  elucidated  by  the  late  Robertson 
Smith  in  his  epoch-making  work,  The  Religion  of  the 
Semites.  In  most  respects  it  is,  as  yet,  impossible  to 
advance  beyond  the  position  there  taken.  The  primitive 
Semitic  community  was,  as  he  has  so  well  shown,  thought 
by  them  to  be  made  up  of  gods,  men,  and  animals,  all  of 
whom  were  akin  to  one  another.  All  nature  was  peopled 
with  spirits,  but  the  god  of  a  people  was  the  chief  spirit 
of  the  locality  where  that  people  dwelt.  The  gods  were 
confined  each  to  its  own  tribe  or  clan,  and  in  their  activi- 
ties they  were  limited  to  certain  localities.  They  were 
originally  chthonic,  and  were  identified  with  objects  on 
the  earth  before  they  were  associated  with  heavenly  bodies. 
In  this  chthonic  period  they  were  especially  associated 
with  springs,  wells,  and  trees,  and  were  regarded  as  the 
proprietors  of  naturally  watered  land.  The  bond  between 
them  and  their  worshippers  was  thought  to  be  one  of 
physical  kinship,  and  was  believed  to  be  renewed  by  sac- 
rifice. The  latter  was  originally  conceived  as  a  meal  at 
which  both  the  gods  and  their  worshippers  partook  of  the 
flesh  of  a  victim  which  was  akin  to  them  both.  Each  clan 
had  its  own  god  which  it  especially  worshipped,  though  it 
did  not  deny  the  reality  of  the  gods  of  other  clans.  Each 
god  was  limited  in  his  activities  largely  to  his  own  soil ; 
and  when  one  lived  in  the  territory  of  a  clan  not  his  own 
he  must,  in  addition  to  his  own  god,  worship  the  god  of 
the  soil  on  which  he  resided. 
o  81 


82  SEMITIC  ORIGINS 


These  positions  Smith  has  satisfactorily  established,  and 
it  is  not  necessary  to  reopen  their  discussion  here.  In 
one  respect,  however,  it  is  possible  to  carry  the  investiga- 
tion farther  than  Smith  did,  and  to  determine  the  gender 
of  the  chief  deities  of  the  primitive  Semites,  the  connec- 
tion of  their  gods  with  the  social  organization  outlined  in 
the  preceding  chapter,  and  some  of  the  transformations 
wrought  in  the  conception  of  their  nature  by  changed 
economic  conditions,  migrations,  and  syncretism. 

It  is  a  law  which  may  be  regarded  as  practically  univer- 
sal, that  the  religious  conceptions  of  a  people  are  expressed 
in  forms  which  are  modelled,  in  large  degree,  on  those 
political  and  social  institutions  which  the  economical  con- 
ditions of  their  situation  have  produced.  Thus,  a  god 
could  not  be  conceived  as  a  father  where  marriage  was  so 
unstable  that  fatherhood  was  no  recognized  feature  of  the 
social  structure,  nor  as  a  king  among  a  people  into  whose 
experience  the  institution  of  kingship  had  never  entered. 
An  illustration  of  this  principle  may  be  found  in  the  fact 
that  republican  institutions  are,  by  their  influence,  gradu- 
ally banishing  the  kingly  idea  of  God  from  theological 
discussions,  and  are  leading  to  an  emphasis  of  the  father- 
hood, and  even  brotherhood  of  God.1  We  should  there- 
fore, on  general  principles,  be  led  to  suppose  that  the 
prominence  of  the  mother  and  the  institutions  of  mater- 
nal kinship  among  the  primitive  Semitic  clans,  as  well 
as  their  tendency  to  unregulated  intercourse  and  the 
important  functions  of  the  date  palm,  all  left  a  deep 
impress  on  their  religious  ideas  and  practices.  Indeed, 
we  may  be  sure  that  this  is  the  case,  especially  as  a 
large  mass  of  evidence  has  survived  which  is  only  intel- 
ligible when  interpreted  in  the  light  of  these  general 
laws. 

A  considerable  mass  of  this  evidence  was  presented  in 

1  Cf.  Can  I  believe  in  God  the  Father  ?  by  W.  N.  Clarke,  Scribners, 
1899,  ch.  iii;  and  "Fides  et  Spes  Medici,"  by  Dr.  R.  H.  Thomas  in 
Present  Day  Papers,  London,  Vol.  Ill  (1900),  p.  377. 


SEMITIC  RELIGIOUS  ORIGINS  83 

the  writer's  study,  "The  Semitic  Ishtar  Cult,"1  the  main 
conclusions  of  which  are  confirmed  by  further  investiga- 
tion. Additional  material  has  also  now  been  collected, 
so  that  it  is  possible,  in  several  respects,  to  carry  the  sub- 
ject farther,  and  to  prove  more  clearly  than  in  1894  that 
the  primitive  Semitic  religion  was  organized  on  the  analo- 
gies of  its  economic  and  social  life.  In  the  article  men- 
tioned the  Ishtar  cult  was  shown  to  be  coextensive  with 
the  Semitic  peoples,  traces  of  it  appearing  in  Assyria, 
Babylonia,  north  and  south  Arabia,  Ethiopia,  Nabathaea, 
Moab,  Palestine,  Phoenicia,  Cyprus,  Malta,  Sicily,  and 
Carthage.  With  three  exceptions,  the  deity  in  all  these 
countries  which  received  the  largest  share  of  the  popular 
homage  was  a  mother  goddess,  and  a  patroness  of  unmar- 
ried love.  In  Babylonia,  Arabia,  and  Cyprus  virgins 
must  sacrifice  to  her  their  chastity  by  an  act  of  free  love ; 
at  Byblos  this  might  be  commuted  to  a  sacrifice  of  the 
.hair;  and  at  Carthage  and  elsewhere  her  feasts  were 
attended  by  impure  ceremonies,  in  which  sexual  excesses 
formed  a  prominent  feature.  The  Israelites  found  this 
cult  among  the  Canaanites,  and  adopted,  as  most  scholars 
hold,  many  features  of  its  ritual.  At  all  events,  by  the 
time  of  the  prophets  the  feasts  of  Yahwe  were  foul  with 
deeds  most  subversive  of  spiritual  ideas. 

Connected  with  this  worship  in  historical  times  were 
bands  of  priestesses  (and  often  of  priests)  consecrated  to 
a  service  which,  judged  by  modern  standards,  would  be 
prostitution.  Ukhat,  the  creature  who  in  the  Eabani 
episode  2  enticed  that  primitive  man  from  his  animals,  was 
a  prototype  and  model  of  this  order.  With  primitive 
simplicity  she  unblushingly  enticed  him  to  the  satisfac- 
tion of  desire,  and  is,  in  the  Gilgamish  epic,  celebrated 
for  her  act.3 

1  Published  in  Hebraica,  Vol.  IX,  pp.  131-165,  and  Vol.  X,  pp.  1-74. 
Cf .  also  notes  on  the  same  topic  in  Hebraica,  Vol.  X,  pp.  202-205. 

2  See  above,  p.  43. 

8  Cf.  Haupt's  Nimrodepos,  p.  11,  11.  16-21.  For  translations  of  the  pas- 
sage, cf.  Jastrow,  Religion  of  Babylonia  and  Assyria,  p.  477  ;  Jensen  in 


84  SEMITIC  ORIGINS 


There  can  be  no  doubt  that  the  mother  goddess  whose 
worship  is  thus  widely  diffused  is  a  survival  from  primi- 
tive Semitic  times,  when  the  mother  held  the  chief  place 
in  the  clan,  and  all  women  shared  a  measure  of  free  love. 
As  social  conditions  changed,  the  women  who  adhered  to 
the  old  practices  would  all  have  lost  caste  and  become 
despised  harlots  but  for  the  fact  that  the  social  character 
of  the  service  of  the  goddess  protected  some  of  them.  As 
civilization  advanced,  it  is  probable  that  religious  con- 
servatism became  a  cloak  for  much  that  was  vile  and  de- 
basing. In  the  beginning,  however,  the  practices  which 
were  thus  perpetuated  must  have  been  comparatively  in- 
nocent, since  they  but  reflected  the  best  thought  of  primi- 
tive man  with  reference  to  manifestations  of  the  divine. 

The  goddess  Ishtar  reflects,  as  was  noted  in  the  preced- 
ing chapter,  by  her  various  unions  the  brevity  of  the  mar- 
riage tie  among  the  primitive  Semites.  She  married  a 
lion,  a  horse,  and  a  bird,  each  for  a  brief  space.  She 
desired  to  unite  herself  to  Gilgamish,  the  hero  of  Uruk 
(Erech),  but  he  declined  her  advances.  Thus,  the  myth 
concerning  her  and  the  ritual  by  which  she  was  served 
reflect  two  different  phases  of  primitive  Semitic  life,  — 
the  temporary  marriage  and  the  consecration  of  the  func- 
tions of  woman  to  the  service  of  childbearing  by  one  or 
more  acts  of  free  love. 

These  features  of  her  worship,  taken  in  connection  with 
its  universal  diffusion  among  the  Semites,  renders  us 
certain  of  its  existence  in  the  primitive  Semitic  home. 

It  is  important  for  us  to  note,  also,  that  Ishtar  was  not 
only  the  divinity  who  presided  over  human  love,  but  over 
all  animal  desire  as  well.  Once  when,  according  to  an 
ancient  poem,  she  abandoned  the  earth  for  the  lower  world, 
animals  as  well  as  men  lost  desire  altogether.1 

KB.,  Vol.  VI,  p.  127 ;  and  Muss-Arnolt  in  Assyrian  and  Babylonian 
Literature,  Aldine  ed.,  p.  330. 

1  Cf.  Hebraica,  Vol.  IX,  p.  147  ;  and  Jeremias's  Leben  nach  dem  Tode, 
p.  17. 


SEMITIC  RELIGIOUS  ORIGINS  85 

Connected  with  the  worship  of  Ishtar  was  the  worship 
of  the  god  called  in  Babylonia  Dumu-zi  or  Tammuz.  The 
fourth  month  was  named  for  him,  and  one  of  the  chief 
features  of  his  worship  was  a  ceremony  of  wailing  for  his 
death,  which  was  followed  by  wild  rejoicing  that  he  had 
come  to  life.  Prominent  among  the  forms  under  which 
this  joy  manifested  itself  was  indulgence  in  unwedded 
love.1  Tammuz  is  variously  represented  in  Semitic 
mythology  as  son  of  Ishtar,  as  the  first  of  her  series  of 
rejected  husbands,  and  as  the  beloved  and  lost  husband  of 
her  youth,  whom  she  went  to  the  under  world  to  rescue.2 
These  myths  represent  conceptions  which  were  formed  by 
three  different  stages  of  social  progress.  That  which  sees 
in  Tammuz  Ishtar's  son  is  a  reflection  of  the  primitive 
Semitic  family,  the  head  of  which  is  the  mother,  and  the 
chief  male  her  son.  The  second,  which  makes  him  a 
rejected  husband,  comes  from  a  time  a  little  later,  when 
marriage  was  still  temporary  and  women  quite  free,  but 
when  the  original  kindly  relations  between  Ishtar  and 
Tammuz  had  been  forgotten.  According  to  this  view,  the 
Tammuz  wailing  was  a  consequence  of  Ishtar's  hatred  and 
vengeance,  and  not  of  her  grief  at  his  loss,  as  in  the  former 
case.  Thejihird  form  of  the  myth  reflects  the  later  con- 
ception of  marriage  as  a  more  permanent  and  less  sensual 
relation.  In  the  light  of  primitive  Semitic  social  con- 
ditions, there  can  be  no  doubt  but  that  the  first  of  these 
conceptions  is  the  original  one. 

Many  scholars  agree  that  Tammuz  was  in  some  way  con- 
nected with  vegetation,  and  that  the  legend  of  his  death 
was  a  reflection  of  the  annual  dying  of  the  leaves.3  To 

1  Cf.  Lucian's  De  Syria  Dea,  §  6 ;  Ez.  81* ;  and  Hebraica,  Vol.  X, 
pp.  31,  35,  73. 

2  Cf.  II  R.  36,  54 ;   n  R.  59,  col.  ii,  1.  9 ;  IV  R.  31,  esp.   col.   ii, 
1.  46  ff.  ;  Haupt's  Nimrodepos,  p.  44,  1.  46  ff. ;  and  Hebraica,  Vol.  X, 
pp.  73,  74. 

•  Cf.  Jensen,  Kosmologie  der  Babylonier,  pp.  197,  227  ;  Frazer,  Golden 
Bough,  Vol.  I,  pp.  278-296 ;  Jeremias,  Leben  nach  dem  Tode,  pp.  32,  41  ; 
Nowack,  Archaologie,  Vol.  II,  p.  310  ;  Bertholet,  Das  Buck  Hezekiel, 


86  SEMITIC  ORIGINS 


this  opinion  I  adhered  when  the  "  Ishtar  Cult " 1  was 
written,  and  further  study  confirms  it.  Robertson  Smith 
was  probably  right  in  the  opinion  that  the  wailing  at  first 
began  as  a  mourning  for  the  death  of  a  theanthropic 
victim,2  but  there  can  be  little  doubt  but  that  it  was  very 
shortly  associated  with  the  death  of  vegetation.  Lenor- 
mant 3  and  Halevy  4  are,  I  now  think,  wrong  in  claiming 
a  Semitic  origin  for  the  name,  and  it  is  not  probable 
that  this  origin  was  connected  with  vegetation  except 
indirectly.5  Adonis,  the  name  under  which  Lucian  men- 
tions him,  is  but  an  epithet  which,  in  Phoenicia,  had  dis- 
placed the  original  name,  as  other  epithets  displaced  it 
elsewhere.  The  original  name  is  hopelessly  lost. 

The  opinion  expressed  in  the  "  Ishtar  Cult "  that  Ishtar 
was  originally  a  water  goddess,  the  divinity  of  some  never 
failing  spring  or  springs,  and  that  some  sacred  tree  to 
which  the  spring  gave  life  represented  her  son,5  can  now 
be  confirmed  by  additional  arguments. 

The  reasons  which  led  to  the  adoption  of  that  opinion 
were :  (1)  that  Athtar,  in  a  number  of  Sabsean  inscrip- 
tions, is  called  "  lord  of  the  water  supply  "  ; 6  (2)  an  old 

p.  49  ;  Jastrow,  Religion  of  Babylonia  and  Assyria,  p.  682  ff. ;  and  Toy, 
Ezekiel  in  SBOT.,p.  Ill  ff. 

1  Hebraica,  Vol.  X,  pp.  73,  74.  The  hymn  to  Tammuz,  IV  R.  27, 
No.  1,  specifically  connects  'him  with  vegetation.  Cf.  Ball's  translation, 
PSBA.,  Vol.  XVI,  p.  196.  The  name  is,  however,  Sumerian,  and  means 
"  child  of  life  "  or  "  living  child."  It  probably  refers  to  Tammuz  as  the 
child  of  the  goddess  of  fertility. 

3  Religion  of  the  Semites,  2d  ed.,  p.  411. 
*  Sur  le  nom  Tammuz. 

4  Recherches  bibliques,  p.  95,  and  Melanges  de  critique  et  d'histoire, 
p.  177. 

6  Hebraica,  Vol.  X,  p.  73.  I  am  now  convinced,  however,  that  the 
name  Tammuz  is  not  primitive,  but  Sumerian  Babylonian.  It  was  at 
times  even  applied  to  a  goddess  (see  below,  Chapter  V).  While  the  name 
Tammnz  was  local  (cf.  my  article,  "The  Genesis  of  the  God  Eshmun," 
in  JAGS.,  Vol.  XXI,2  p.  188  ff.),  the  god  was,  I  believe,  primitive,  though 
a  less  permanent  and  fundamental  factor  in  the  religion  than  the 
goddess. 

•See  CIS.,  Pt.  IV,  Vol.  I,  No.  47,  and  Fell,  in  ZDMG., Vol.LIV, 
p.  245. 


SEMITIC  RELIGIOUS  ORIGINS  87 

Babylonian  hymn  calls  Ishtar  "  the  producer  of  verdure";1 

(3)  the  god  Baal,  with  whom  Ashtart  in  Phoenicia  was 
closely  associated,  was    the  god   of   well-watered  land; 

(4)  the  evident  connection  of  Tammuz  with  vegetation; 
and  (5)  the  series  of  tree-like  representations  of  the  god- 
dess found  by  Ohnefalsch-Richter  in  Cyprus. 

To  these  arguments  we  may  now  add  the  following 
considerations:  the  fact  that  in  two  inscriptions  from 
Gebal-Din,  Athtar  is  the  god  of  field  fertility,  which  is 
in  Arabia  especially  connected  with  the  water  supply,2 
forms  another  link  connecting  this  cult  with  water  and 
vegetation.  Ilmaqqahu,  who,  as  is  shown  below,8  was 
really  Athtar  under  another  name,  was  also  the  god  of 
field  fertility.4  Traces  of  tree-worship  also  appear,  which, 
if  the  Ishtar  Cult  represents  the  religion  of  the  primitive 
Semites,  must  be  regarded  as  survivals  from  that  time. 
Trees  were  thought  to  be  animate  and  to  have  perceptions 
and  passions,  and  were  not  infrequently  taken  as  totems.6 
In  the  latter  case,  all  the  attributes  were  ascribed  to  them 
which  under  like  circumstances  were  ascribed  to  sacred 
animals.  This  proves  the  existence  of  that  attitude  of 
mind  on  the  part  of  the  Semites  which  could  easily  see  a 
god  in  a  tree.  It  still  survives  in  Arabia,  where  certain 
trees  are  thought  to  be  inhabited  by  the  jinn  even  to  the 
present  time.6  Such  trees  were  probably  in  the  pre-Islamic 
days  regarded  as  the  residences  of  gods,  who,  upon  the 
introduction  of  Islam,  shared  the  fate  of  other  deities  and 
were  deposed  to  the  rank  of  evil  spirits.  In  like  manner 
the  Jews  and  early  Christians  regarded  the  gods  of  the 
heathen  as  demons.7  Sometimes,  however,  it  is  not  jinn 

1  Cf.  Zimmern's  Babylonische  Busspsalmen,  p.  33,  and  Hebraica,  Vol. 
X,  p.  15. 

8  See  CIS.,  Pt  IV,  Vol.  I,  Nos.  104,  105.  3  Chapter  IV. 

«  Cf.  CIS.,  Pt.  IV,  Vol.  I,  Nos.  72-102,  and  Fell,  in  ZDMG.,  Vol.  LIV, 
p.  244  ff. 

6  Smith's  Religion  of  the  Semites,  2d  ed.,  p.  132. 

•  Doughty's  Arabia  Deserta,  Vol.  I,  p.  366. 

*  Cf.  Deut.  32"  and  1  Cor.  10«>. 


88  SEMITIC  ORIGINS 


but  angels  who  are  thought  to  come  down  to  tabernacle  in 
the  trees ;  and  it  is  still  the  custom  in  parts  of  Arabia  for 
the  sick  to  go  to  trees  which  are  thus  visited  and  offer 
sacrifice  and  prayer  for  the  recovery  of  their  health.  The 
offering  is  usually  a  sheep  or  a  goat,  the  blood  is  sprinkled, 
the  flesh  cooked  at  the  place,  a  part  of  it  is  divided  among 
the  friends  of  the  sick  man  and  a  part  left  hanging  on  the 
branches  of  the  tree.  The  worshipper  then  lies  down  and 
sleeps,  confident  that  the  angels  will  come  in  vision  and 
speak  precepts  for  his  health  so  that  he  will  rise  whole.1 
Such  possessed  trees  are  behung  with  old  beads,  votive 
shreds  of  calico,  lappets  of  colored  stuffs  and  other  such 
things.1  This  is  a  relic  of  old  Arabian  heathenism,  in 
which  offerings  were  made  in  the  same  manner.  The  tra- 
ditions tell  that  Mohammed  referred  to  such  a  tree  as  "  a 
tree  to  hang  things  on."  2 

Such  traces  of  worship  are  not  now  found  in  connection 
with  the  palm  tree  in  Arabia,  but  more  often  with  the  acacia, 
though  at  times  with  other  trees  and  even  with  shrubs. 
Some  evidences  of  the  worship  of  the  palm  tree  in  ancient 
times  are  still  extant.  Tabari  refers  to  the  sacred  date- 
palm  of  Negran,  where  the  tree  was  in  all  respects  treated 
as  a  god.8  The  residence  of  Al-Uzza  at  Nakhla,  who  was 
in  reality  an  Athtar,4  is  said  by  Ibn  Abbas  to  have  been  a 
group  of  Samura  trees,  in  one  of  which  the  goddess  espe- 
cially dwelt.  The  Samura  tree  is  explained  by  a  scholion 
to  Ibn  Hisham  (p.  145)  to  be  a  palm  tree.5  The  reliabil- 

1  Doughty's  Arabia  Deserta,  Vol.  I,  p.  449  ff. 

3  Smith's  Religion  of  the  Semites,  2d  ed.,  p.  185. 

8  Cf.  Annales  quos  scripsit  at-Tabari,  van  M.  J.  de  Goeje,  Leyden, 
1879-1897,  Vol.  I,  p.  922,  and  Geschichte  der  Perser  und  Araber  zur  Zeit 
der  Sassniden  aus  der  arabisch  Chronik  des  Tabari,  von  Th.  Noldeke, 
Leyden,  1879,  p.  181.  Smith  (op.  cit.,  p.  185)  hold.s  that  the  statement 
is  incredible  because  it  rests  on  the  authority  of  a  liar ;  but  liars  some- 
times tell  the  truth. 

*  Cf.  Hebraica,  Vol.  X,  pp.  58-66. 

6  Wellhausen's  Eeste  arabische  Heidentums,  2d  ed.,  p.  38.  Well- 
hausen  suspects  this  statement,  because  the  vale  of  Nakhla  (Palms)  was 
so  near.  That,  however,  does  not  prove  the  statement  wrong. 


SEMITIC   RELIGIOUS  ORIGINS  89 

ity  of  these  statements  has  been  unjustly  suspected  by 
Wellhausen  and  Robertson  Smith.  The  story  of  the  birth 
of  Jesus,  as  told  in  the  Qur'an,  vouches  for  the  ancient 
sacredness  of  the  palm.  According  to  the  statement  of 
Mohammed,  which  probably  comes  from  Arabian  Chris- 
tians, Mary  retired  to  a  palm  tree  (Sura,  1923)  as  the  time 
of  her  delivery  drew  near,  and  was  miraculously  nourished 
by  dates  produced  out  of  season  (1925).  Such  a  state- 
ment reveals  the  conception  that  the  palm  tree  was  closely 
related  to  the  divine.  All  these  references  coincide  with 
a  number  of  facts  from  other  parts  of  the  Semitic  world 
which  indicate  that  the  date  palm  was  sacred,  and  thus 
receive  a  confirmation  which  establishes  a  strong  pre- 
sumption of  their  truth. 

In  Abyssinia  as  in  Egypt  the  sycamore  was  a  sacred 
tree,  and  in  some  instances  still  maintains  this  character.1 

The  terebinth  was  a  sacred  tree  in  Palestine.  It  plays 
a  prominent  part  in  the  traditions  concerning  Abraham 
(Gen.  1318,  1413,  181),  Gideon  received  a  message  from  an 
angel  under  one  (Jud.  611),  and  in  the  days  of  Hosea  in- 
cense was  burned  under  terebinths  (Hos.  413).  There  are 
traces  also  that  the  date-palm  was  a  sacred  tree  in  Israel. 
Deborah  is  said  to  have  sat  under  a  palm  tree,  and  is  called 
a  prophetess  (Jud.  46),  the  inference  being  that  the  palm 
was  sacred,  and  that  it  helped  her  inspiration  to  be  near 
it.  Some  scholars  endeavor  to  identify  this  with  the  tere- 
binth of  Gen.  358,  but  without  sufficient  ground.2  There 
is  reason,  as  will  appear  below,  to  believe  that  the  tree  of 
knowledge  in  Gen.  3  was  a  date  palm.  Evidence  of  this 
also  comes  to  us  from  the  Jewish  book  of  Enoch.  In  the 
oldest  portion  of  the  Ethiopic  Enoch  we  are  told  (ch.  24) 
how  Enoch  visited  paradise,  and  found  that  the  tree  of  life 
was  a  date-palm.3  The  full  significance  of  this  statement 

1  Cf.  Bent's  Sacred  City  of  the  Ethiopians,  p.  210. 

3  So  Moore,  Judges  in  Inter.  Crit.  Comm.,  p.  113,  and  Budde,  Richter, 
in  Marti's  Kurzer  Hand  Commentar,  p.  35.  On  the  other  hand,  cf.  H.  P. 
Smith's  Samuel  in  Inter.  Crit.  Comm.,  p.  67. 

8  Cf.  Charles's  The  Book  of  Enoch,  1893.  Charles  rightly  dates  this 
portion  of  the  book  before  170  B.C. 


90  SEMITIC   ORIGINS 


will  appear  at  a  later  point ;  it  is  enough  to  note  at  pres- 
ent that  it  affords  evidence  that  the  date-palm  as  a  sacred 
tree  played  a  very  important  role  in  the  thought  of  ancient 
Israel.  Other  evidence  of  this  is  not  wanting.  The  story 
of  Judah  and  Tamar  (Gen.  38)  indicates,  since  Tamar 
means  palm,  that  a  clan  was  incorporated  into  the  tribe 
of  Judah  which  made  the  palm  a  totem,  and  therefore 
regarded  it  as  a  sacred  tree.  Further,  on  the  confines  of 
Judah  and  Benjamin,  there  was  a  place,  Baal-Tamar,  which 
took  its  name  from  a  god  who  must  have  been  called  "lord 
of  the  palm"  (Jud.  2033).  Earlier  it  seems  to  have  been 
called  Baalat- Tamar,  or  "lady  of  the  palm."  In  all  prob- 
ability the  name  was  derived  from  an  early  connection  of 
a  deity  with  a  sacred  tree. 

At  Elim,  one  of  the  stations  at  which  the  Israelites  are 
said  to  have  stopped  on  the  way  out  of  Egypt,  the  palm  had 
a  sacred  significance,  since  it  is  connected  with  the  sacred 
number  seventy  and  with  twelve  sacred  wells  (Ex.  1527). 
Jericho,  too,  was  called  the  "  city  of  palm  trees  "  (Deut. 
343,  Jud.  I16,  313),  and  it  is  probable  that  there  in  early 
times  the  palm  had  a  sacred  significance.  The  fact  that 
the  palm  tree  and  cherub  formed  part  of  the  adornment  of 
the  interior  of  the  temple  of  Ezekiel  (Ez.  4118)  and  of  the 
temple  of  Solomon  affords  further  proof  of  the  same  thing. 
We  cannot  doubt,  therefore,  that  the  palm  was  a  sacred 
tree  among  the  Hebrews  or  their  immediate  ancestors. 

The  numerous  representations  of  trees  on  Babylonian 
and  Assyrian  cylinders  and  monuments  attest,  as  several 
scholars  have  recognized,  a  primitive  tree  worship  for  the 
ancient  Babylonians  or  their  ancestors.  The  tree  most 
represented,  however,  is  the  date-palm,  and  this  is  shown 
to  be  in  most  instances  the  female  date-palm  by  the  hang- 
ing clusters  of  dates.1  Many  of  the  representations  on 

1  Cf.  Schrader  in  Monatsbericht  d.  kgl.  preus.  Ak.  d.  Wiss.  zu  Berlin, 
1882,  p.  426  ff.  Other  trees  were  also  sacred ;  cf.  Bonavia's  article, 
"Sacred  Trees  of  the  Assyrian  Monuments"  in  the  Babylonian  and 
Oriental  Record,  Vol.  III. 


SEMITIC   RELIGIOUS  ORIGINS  91 

the  monuments  picture  a  winged  being,  sometimes  with  a 
human  face  and  sometimes  with  an  eagle's  face,  holding  in 
one  hand  a  basket  or  bucket,  and  in  the  other  a  cone  which 
he  is  applying  to  the  tree.  That  the  difference  in  sex  of 
the  date-palms  was  known  to  the  ancient  Assyrians  is 
attested  by  a  fragment  of  a  list  of  trees  which  was  found 
in  the  library  of  Assurbanipal,  but  which  was  probably 
copied  from  a  Babylonian  list  of  much  greater  antiquity, 
and  in  which  gishimmaru  zakiru,  or  "  the  male  date-palm," 
is  distinguished  from  gishimmaru  zinnisktu,  or  "  the  female 
date-palm."1  E.  B.  Tylor  first  suggested  that  the  winged 
figures  which  apply  the  mysterious  cones  to  the  trees  are 
representations  of  the  winds  —  personified  as  divine  agen- 
cies—  in  carrying  the  pollen  of  the  male  flowers  to  the 
stigmata  of  the  female  flowers,  so  as  to  fertilize  them.2 
He  found  in  these  figures  the  explanation  of  the  cherubim 
of  Ezekiel  and  of  Genesis,  as  well  as  of  other  parts  of  the 
Old  Testament.  This  seemed  especially  appropriate,  since 
Ps.  1810,  in  a  description  of  the  coming  of  Yahwe  on  a 
thunder  cloud,  equates  the  cherub  with  the  wind.  This 
view  has  since  been  accepted  by  others,3  and  affords  a 
most  satisfactory  explanation  of  these  interesting  repre- 
sentations. Some  of  these  portray  a  fish  god,  i.e.  Ea  in 
the  act  of  performing  this  fecundation.  Ea  was  a  water 
god  —  a  god  of  fertility,  originally  connected,  as  will  be 
shown  by  and  by,  with  the  primitive  Semitic  mother  goddess.4 
In  the  legend  of  Cannes,  as  preserved  in  Berossos,  and 
which  is  in  reality  a  myth  of  Ea,  a  fish-like  monster  came, 
we  are  told,  from  the  sea,  and  taught  the  Babylonians  the 

i  Cf.  n  R.,  p.  46,  No.  2, 11.  29,  30. 

»  See  PSBA.,  Vol.  XII,  pp.  383-393. 

8  Cf.  Jastrow's  Religion  of  Babylonia  and  Assyria,  p.  662,  and  Haupt 
in  Toy's  Ezekiel  in  SBOT.,  pp.  181-184. 

4  See  Chapter  V.  The  fertilization  of  the  date-palm  in  Mesopotamia  has 
to  be  performed  in  part  by  hand  unto  the  present  time.  (See  Zwemer's 
Arabia,  the  Cradle  of  Islam,  p.  123.)  This  fact  explains  the  anthropomor- 
phic form  of  the  cherub.  The  wind  is  conceived  as  a  supernatural  man 
applying  the  fertilization  by  hand. 


92  SEMITIC   ORIGINS 


beginnings  of  civilization.  Among  other  arts  he  made 
them  distinguish  seeds,  and  taught  them  how  to  collect 
fruit.  In  his  hands,  therefore,  the  cone  and  bucket  would 
properly  have  a  place. 

The  fact  that  the  sacred  character  of  trees  is  established 
for  so  many  parts  of  the  Semitic  area  is  good  evidence  that 
tree  worship  existed  in  the  primitive  Semitic  home,  and 
the  traces  of  the  sacred  character  of  the  date-palm  which 
have  been  adduced  above  lead  us  to  think,  when  taken  in 
connection  with  what  we  learned  in  the  previous  chapter 
of  that  tree,  that  it  was  the  sacred  tree  par  excellence. 

In  the  same  way  the  idea  that  perennial  springs  and 
wells  were  connected  with  divinities  is  found  in  many 
parts  of  the  Semitic  territory,  and  is  no  doubt  primi- 
tive. At  Beersheba,  Dan,  Sidon,1  on  Mount  Lebanon,2 
and  at  Mecca  sacred  wells  and  springs  were  found,  not 
to  mention  many  others.  That  they  do  not  appear  in 
Babylonia  is  due  to  the  presence  of  the  great  rivers  and  the 
nature  of  the  irrigation  of  the  country ;  but  the  fact  that 
Ea  was  a  water  god  attests  there  the  same  circle  of  ideas. 
We  cannot  therefore  be  far  wrong  in  coupling  the  two  — 
the  palm  tree  and  the  spring  —  and  in  seeing  a  mythologi- 
cal representation  of  them  in  the  primitive  mother  goddess, 
Ishtar,  and  her  son  Tammuz.  Indeed,  the  well  at  or  near 
Sidon  was  sacred  to  Eshmun,  a"  god  who,  as  I  have  pointed 
out  elsewhere,8  was  probably  developed  out  of  Tammuz  by 
the  use  of  an  epithet. 

That  this  is  a  correct  view  is  confirmed  from  another 
quarter.  The  Assyriologists  of  a  score  of  years  ago 4  re- 
garded the  pictures  of  the  sacred  tree  on  Babylonian  and 

1  CIS.,  Pt.  I,  Vol.  I,  No.  3, 1.  17. 

a  Cf.  Hebraica,  Vol.  X,  pp.  33  and  61-66,  and  Smith's  Religion  of  the 
Semites,  2d  ed.,  pp.  166  ff.  and  177  f. 

8  See  the  article  "  Ashmun  "  (Eshmun)  in  the  Jewish  Encyclopedia,  and 
"The  Genesis  of  the  God  Eshmun"  in  PAOS.,  Vol.  XXI2,  p.  188 ff.,  and 
below,  Chapter  VI. 

4  So  George  Smith  in  his  Chaldcean  Genesis  ;  see  the  German  transla- 
tion, p.  84  ;  also  Lenormant  in  his  Origines  de  Vhistoire,  Vol.  I,  p.  90. 


SEMITIC   RELIGIOUS  ORIGINS  93 

Assyrian  monuments  as  the  prototype  of  the  tree  of  life  in 
Gen.  2  and  3,  and  though  this  view  is  rejected  by  some * 
who  see  in  these  pictures  the  date-palm,  it  is,  I  believe, 
a  hint  in  the  right  direction.  The  Yahwistic  writer  of 
Gen.  2  and  3  gives  us  a  twofold  representation  of  the.  cir- 
cumstances of  the  union  of  Adam  and  Eve  and  its  effect. 
In  ch.  2  we  are  told  how  man,  after  consorting  with  the 
beasts,  left  them  for  the  woman  and  became  "one  flesh" 
with  her.  That  this  was  the  original  form  of  the  story  the 
parallelism  of  the  Eabani  and  Ukhat  episode  in  the  Gil- 
gamish  epic  enables  us  to  determine.2  It  also  enables  us 
to  see  that  the  Rabbis  were  right  in  explaining  "  cleave  to 
his  wife  and  become  one  flesh  "  as  referring  to  connubial 
intercourse.8 

In  ch.  3  the  same  thing  is  differently  represented.  A 
serpent  tells  the  woman  to  pluck  the  fruit  from  a  for- 
bidden tree,  she  does  it,  the  man  and  woman  both  eat  of 
it,  their  eyes  are  opened,  and  they  know  good  and  evil. 
The  first  effect  of  this  knowledge  was  the  perception  of 
the  difference  of  sex  —  the  perception  that  they  were 
naked.  The  Rabbis  thought  that  the  serpent  here  repre- 
sented the  sexual  passion,4  but  it  is  doubtful  whether 
this  is  correct.  As  among  many  other  peoples,  the  ser- 
pent was  sacred 6  among  practically  all  the  Semites.  He 
belonged  no  doubt  to  that  primitive  totemistic  circle  of 
society  of  which  we  have  seen  the  primitive  Semitic  com- 
munity to  consist.  He  is  here  represented  as  living  in 
the  primitive  garden  or  oasis,  where  serpents  no  doubt 
abounded,  and  as  urging  man  to  partake  of  an  act 
which  seemed  to  him  a  divinely  provided  joy.  In  ch.  2 
and  its  Babylonian  parallel,  woman  enticed  man  from  in- 

1  So  Bonavia,  Babylonian  and  Oriental  Record,  Vol.  Ill,  p.  36  ff. 

2Cf.  Jastrow's  "  Adam  and  Eve  in  Babylonian  Literature  "  in  AJSL., 
Vol.  XV,  pp.  192-214. 

»Cf.  Jastrow,  AJSL.,  Vol.  XV,  p.  207,  n.  44. 

*AJSL.,  Vol.  XV,  p.  209. 

8Cf.  Pietschmann's  Geschichte  der  Phonizier,  p.  227,  and Kittel's  Konige 
in  Nowack's  Hand-Kommentar,  p.  278  ff. 


94  SEMITIC  ORIGINS 


tercourse  with  the  beasts,  so  here  a  beast  is  represented  as 
urging  man  to  union  with  woman.  The  two  representa- 
tions arose  no  doubt  because  of  the  union  of  two  originally 
independent  explanations.  The  effect  of  tasting  this 
divine  fruit  was  that  man  was  thereby  brought  to  the 
knowledge  of  good  and  evil,  i.e.  to  the  exercise  of  a  virile 
manhood  ;  he  was  led  to  adopt  clothing,  to  till  the  soil,  and 
to  a  knowledge  of  the  various  features  of  civilization.  This 
view  of  the  meaning  of  good  and  evil  is  confirmed  by 
the  fact  that  in  Deut.  I39  "having  no  knowledge  of  good 
and  evil "  is  equivalent  to  not  having  reached  the  age  of 
puberty. 

But  why  in  this  case  should  the  tree  appear  at  all? 
Why  should  its  fruit  even  symbolically  represent  such  an 
act  ?  The  answer  is,  I  believe,  to  be  found  in  the  fact  that 
the  beginnings  of  Semitic  civilization  were  connected  with 
the  date-palm,  that  a  knowledge  of  the  difference  of  sex 
in  these  trees  was  known  at  a  very  early  time,  and  that 
the  marvellous  effect  on  the  palms  of  the  fertilization 
wrought  by  the  wind,  appeared  to  the  primitive  Semitic 
mind  as  a  divine  exhibition  of  sexual  fertilization  and 
divine  approval  of  it.  Thus,  the  two  would  become  asso- 
ciated in  the  Semitic  mind,  and  in  time  the  act  would 
naturally  be  pictured  as  the  fruit  of  the  tree.  That  this 
view  represents  the  truth  is  shown  by  the  fact  that  in  the 
Biblical  narrative  cherubim  are  placed  in  the  gate  of  the 
garden  to  prevent  the  return  of  man  to  his  Eden  of  sexual 
unconsciousness.  The  cherubim  were,  as  we  have  seen, 
representations  of  the  wind,  which  bore  the  fructifying 
pollen  of  the  male  flowers  to  the  female,  and  the  introduc- 
tion of  the  cherubim  at  this  point  represents  the  primitive 
feeling,  that  the  constant  enaction  of  this  divine  process 
of  fertilization  in  the  tree,  which  stood  in  the  garden  of 
his  god  and  which  sustained  life,  forced  man  onward  by  its 
divine  example  to  similar  acts  with  all  their  consequences. 
The  ever-present  cherubim  of  the  palm  kept  alive,  he 
thought,  the  sexual  passion  in  himself  which  made  absti- 


SEMITIC   RELIGIOUS  ORIGINS  95 

nence  and  a  return  to  conditions  which  he  regarded  as 
primitive  (i.e.  a  life  in  which  woman  played  no  part) 
impossible.1 

Thus  the  Assyrio-Babylonian  sacred  tree  becomes  not 
the  prototype  in  the  first  instance  of  the  tree  of  life,  but  of 
the  tree  of  knowledge  of  good  and  evil.  A  comparison 
of  Gen.  33-9  with  Gen.  29  and  S22  reveals  the  fact  that  in 
the  original  form  of  the  story  only  one  tree  is  mentioned. 
The  tree  of  life  in  the  two  latter  verses  is  a  later  addi- 
tion.2 That  such  additions  should  be  made  to  the  sub- 
structure we  have  supposed  is  shown  to  have  been  very 
natural  by  the  following  facts.  The  idea  of  a  future  life 
played  no  important  part  in  primitive  Semitic  thought. 
The  life  of  the  spirit  after  death  was  thought  by  the  Baby- 
lonians and  Hebrews  to  be  a  colorless  and  undesirable  one, 
and  to  the  Arabs  of  the  desert,  the  idea  of  an  under  world, 
seems  to  have  been  wholly  lacking.3  The  problem  which 
confronted  them  was  the  cause  of  present  suffering,  and 
not  the  problem  of  an  immortal  life.  As  the  thirst  for  an 
immortal  life  was  felt,  but  before  it  had  been  accepted  as 
a  fact,  the  story  of  the  cause  of  human  suffering  would 
naturally  be  modified  to  make  it  explain  why  man  could  not 
live  forever,  and  this  is  the  form  which  we  have  in  Genesis. 
As  time  went  on  and  a  provisional  immortality  of  five  hun- 

1  Thus  an  Arabic  poet  describes  and  addresses  the  palm :  — 

"  He  lifts  his  leaves  in  the  sunbeam  glance 
As  the  Almehs  lift  their  arms  in  dance  ; 
A  slumbersome  motion,  a  passionate  sigh, 
That  works  in  the  cells  of  the  blood  like  wine. 
O  tree  of  love,  by  that  love  of  thine 
Teach  me  how  I  shall  soften  mine." 
—  Translated  by  Zwemer,  Arabia,  the  Cradle  of  Islam,  p.  121  ff. 

*  See  Die.  BibUsche  Urgeschichte,  von  Karl  Budde,  Giessen,  1883,  p. 
63  ff.,  and  Toy,  JBL.,  Vol.  X,  p.  12  ff. 

8  See  Der  Ahnenkultns  und  die  Urreligion  Israels,  von  Carl  Griineisen, 
Halle,  1900,  p.  55.  This  seems  true  notwithstanding  Stade  (Geschichte, 
Vol.  I,  p.  395,  n.  2),  and  Schwally  (Leben  nachdem  Tode,  p.  46,  etc.).  For 
Babylonian  view  see  Jeremias,  Leben  nach  dem  Tode,  and  for  the  Hebrew, 
Charles,  Eschatology,  p.  33  ff. 


96  SEMITIC   ORIGINS 


dred  years  was  accepted  (Eth.  Enoch,  1010),  the  tree  of 
knowledge  disappeared  from  Eden  and  the  tree  of  life  took 
its  place  (Eth.  Enoch,  24, 25).  Thus  did  Hebrew  thought 
transfer  the  story  from  an  explanation  of  toil  to  the  prom- 
ise of  future  reward.1  This  transfer  was  easy ;  for,  in 
another  sense,  the  tree  was  to  the  primitive  Semite  always 
a  tree  of  life  as  well  as  a  tree  of  knowledge.  The  parallels 
which  the  Eabani  story  affords  to  the  narrative  of  Genesis 
vouch  for  the  Babylonian  derivation  of  the  latter.  This 
is  also  shown  in  the  fact  that  the  garden  is  situated  in  the 
East  (Gen.  28),  and  that  the  Tigris  and  Euphrates  rivers 
are  mentioned  in  connection  with  it2  (Gen.  214*15). 

There  are  in  the  Eabani  episode,  as  has  been  already 
pointed  out,  features  which  were  derived  from  the  primi- 
tive conditions  of  Semitic  social  life.  Although  these 
features  have  been  somewhat  veiled  in  the  Biblical  narra- 
tive, they  are  nevertheless  present,  and  that  narrative  also 
contains  another  primitive  feature  which  is  still  more 
prominent.  The  narrative  in  Gen.  3  represents  God, 
man,  and  the  serpent  as  forming  one  social  circle.  The 

1  On  the  view  presented  in  the  text  the  historical  origin  of  the  Hebrew 
ideas  of  Eden  and  the  heavenly  paradise  or  New  Jerusalem  are  as  fol- 
lows:  The  primitive  conceptions  of  a  sacred  enclosure,  where  the  god 
dwelt  and  the  sacred  tree  was,  grew  out  of  an  Arabian  oasis,  or  possibly  a 
North  African,  at  a  still  earlier  time  (see  below).    This  was  transferred  to 
Babylonia,  where  it  became  a  garden.     This  conception  was  taken  over 
by  the  Hebrews  and  is  represented  in  Gen.  2  and  3.    As  time  passed  on 
and  Jerusalem  was  destroyed  and  rebuilt,  the  Jewish  ideal  passed  from 
a  garden  to  a  city.     A  garden  may  have  been  the  home  in  the  beginning, 
but  a  city  became  their  ideal  for  the  future.    As  Apocalypses  were  writ- 
ten and  their  authors  sought  for  imagery  under  which  to  shadow  forth 
their  hopes  of  the  heavenly  future,  they  sometimes  took  the  picture  of 
Eden  as  did  the  author  of  Eth.  Enoch,  24,  25  ;  sometimes  the  city  of  Jeru- 
salem, as  did  the  author  of  Psal.  Sol.  17  ;  and  sometimes  the  two  were  com- 
bined as  in  the  Apocalypse  of  John,  where  it  is  a  city  with  twelve  gates 
(ch.  21),  and  yet  it  has  a  river  with  a  tree  of  life,  i.e.  a  garden  (ch.  221-2). 
Thus  the  imagery  born  in  prehistoric  times  in  the  Arabian  oasis  with  its 
palm  tree  appears,  transformed  and  elevated  it  is  true,  but  still  appears  on 
the  last  page  of  the  New  Testament. 

2  See  Delitzsch's  Wo  Lag  das  Parodies,  Leipzig,  1881,  and  Haupt, 
in  Ueber  Land  und  Meer,  1894-95,  No.  15. 


SEMITIC   RELIGIOUS  ORIGINS  97 

serpent  is  wiser  than  man  ;  he  talks  to  the  woman,  and  his 
power  of  speech  causes  her  no  astonishment.  These  ele- 
ments of  the  tale  must  have  taken  shape  in  a  primitive 
totemistic  society  in  which  animals  were  really  believed 
to  possess  such  powers ;  i.e.  it  reflects  the  conditions  of 
primitive  Semitic,  and  not  of  Hebrew  thought. 

The  fact  that  in  Genesis  Yahwe  is  represented  as  for- 
bidding the  acquisition  of  the  knowledge  of  good  and  evil 
on  the  part  of  man,  has,  I  think,  nothing  to  do  with  the 
primitive  form  of  the  story;  it  is  but  the  local  coloring 
given  to  the  tale  by  the  Yahwistic  writer.  This  writer,  in 
the  stories  of  Cain  and  his  descendants  which  follow, 
attributes  the  beginnings  of  civilization  in  every  instance 
to  those  who  disobeyed  Yahwe.  When  he  does  so  in  the 
narrative  of  Eden,  he  is  but  following  out  his  prevailing 
tendency.  An  opportunity  was  afforded  him  to  thus 
interpret  the  tale  by  one  of  the  features  of  the  Babylonian 
story,  preserved  on  a  fragmentary  tablet,  which  may  form 
a  part  of  the  Gilgamish  epic.  This  represents  Eabani  as 
cursing  Ukhat,  who  had  promised  to  make  him  like  a  god 
and  who  had  instead  brought  him  to  death.1  This  story 
probably  reflects  the  evil  effects  of  the  unrestrained  sexual 
practices  of  the  Semites,  as  does  also  that  passage  in  the 
sixth  tablet  of  the  epic  where  Ishtar's  love  is  represented 
as  so  terrible  that  she  has  smitten  and  crippled  all  her 
husbands.  Such  loose  sexual  habits  as  those  traced  above 
would  necessarily  produce  venereal  disease  and  death,  and 
such  dire  effects  might  well  be  interpreted  as  evidences  of 
the  anger  of  the  god.  In  the  Eabani  episode  this  view  is, 
so  far  as  we  can  tell,  not  taken.  Eabani's  anger  is  directed 
against  the  woman  alone ;  he  does  not  seem  to  be  conscious 
that  he  has  angered  a  god.  This  latter  inference,  how- 
ever, lay  close  at  hand,  and  could  hardly  fail  to  be  made 
by  a  writer  whose  attitude  toward  civilization  was  like 

1  Cf  Haupt,  Nimrodepos,  pp.  16,  17,  and  BA.,  Vol.  I,  pp.  318,  319 ; 
also  Jastrow,  Religion  of  Babylonia  and  Assyria,  p.  478,  and  AJSL., 
Vol.  XV,  p.  209. 

H 


98  SEMITIC  ORIGINS 


that  of  the  Yahwist.  Side  by  side  with  the  Babylonian 
view  just  described,  and  older  than  it,  was  another,  which 
attributed  civilization  to  the  knowledge  of  sex  and  which 
regarded  both  as  a  blessing.  Divine  approval  was  mani- 
fested through  the  example  of  the  sacred  tree,  which 
was  the  home  of  the  divinity.  It  is  thus  only  that  we 
can  account  for  the  reference  of  civilization  to  sexual 
relations,  for  the  sacred  character  attached  to  those  rela- 
tions among  the  Semites,  and  for  the  connection  of  both 
with  the  sacred  tree.1 

Thus  our  view  of  the  original  form  of  Ishtar  is  con- 
firmed since  in  the  palm  tree,  which  grows  by  every 
Arabian  spring,  and  which  has  grown  there  since  man 
inhabitated  Arabia,2  we  find  that  the  Semite  saw  the  em- 
bodiment of  all  those  features  of  vegetable  and  animal 
fertility  which  characterize  this  primitive  Semitic  cult, 
and  which  found  such  expression  at  a  later  time  in  its 
religious  practices  and  in  its  mythology.  Since  we  are  led 
by  such  reasons  to  these  conclusions,  it  seems  most  natural 
to  find  in  the  rite  of  circumcision,  which  has  survived 
among  the  Arabs,  Abyssinians,  Syrians,  Phoenicians,  and 
Hebrews,  a  confirmation  of  them,  and  in  them  an  explana- 
tion of  Semitic  circumcision.  Circumcision  has  been 
found  among  many  peoples  of  the  world,  and  is  usually 
explained  like  tattooing,  cutting  off  a  finger  joint,  and 
other  mutilations,  as  embracing  the  twofold  idea  of  offer- 
ing a  sacrifice  to  the  god  and  furnishing  a  tribal  mark  by 
which  the  god  may  easily  know  his  followers,  and  they 
may  be  known  to  each  other.  That  it  had  this  latter 
force  among  the  Semites  is  attested  by  its  history  among 
the  Hebrews.  The  Yahwistic  writer  represents  Yahwe 

1  The  Biblical   writer  is  in   this    representation   also  paralleled    by 
another  Babylonian  tale,  the  Adapa  myth  (cf.   KB.,  Vol.  VI,  pp.  92- 
101).    This  myth  represents  the  god  Ea  as  preventing  by  a  deception  the 
eating  of  the  bread  and  water  of  life  (i.e.  the  gaining  of  immortality),  by 
a  mortal.    Cf.  Gunkel,  Schoffing  und  Chaos,  p.  148  ff.,  and  Jastrow,  Ee- 
ligion  of  Babylonia  and  Assyria,  p.  549  ff. 

2  See  Theobald  Fischer  in  Petermann's  Mittheilungen,  Erganzunungs- 
band  XIV,  No.  64,  p.  11,  and  above,  Chapter  II,  p.  75,  n.  4. 


SEMITIC   RELIGIOUS  ORIGINS  99 

(Ex.  4Mt25)  as  trying  to  kill  Moses  or  his  son  as  though 
he  were  of  a  foreign  stock  until  Gershom  was  circumcised, 
when  Yah  we  desisted ;  while  the  priestly  writer  regarded 
circumcision  as  the  sign  of  Yahwe's  covenant  with  his 
people  (Gen.  171<W2,  Ex.  1248).  Such  passages  attest  the 
religious  importance  of  the  rite  among  the  Israelites,  and 
the  struggle  which  Paul  and  the  early  Christians  who 
thought  like  him  were  compelled  to  undertake  to  gain 
emancipation  is  sufficient,  to  mention  no  other  evidence, 
to  show  the  importance  attached  to  it  by  the  Jews  as  the 
visible  sign  to  their  god  and  to  one  another  of  their 
fidelity.1  Herodotus  mentions  the  Syrians  and  Phoeni- 
cians among  those  who  practise  circumcision,2  but  of  the 
details  of  its  practice  among  them  we  know  nothing.  Of  ' 
its  practice  among  the  ancient  Arabs  we  have  fuller  infor- 
mation. It  is  mentioned  by  Josephus  and  Sozomen  as  a 
practice  of  the  northern  Arabs,  and  by  Philostorgius  as  a 
practice  of  the  Sabseans.3  Sharastani  mentions  it  as  one 
of  the  practices  which  Islam  confirmed  as  a  religious  duty.4 
The  way  in  which  it  is  observed  in  Arabia  at  the  present 
time  attests  the  truth  of  this  statement.  Among  the 
Bedawi  it  is  the  occasion  of  a  feast  at  which  the  rite  is 
performed  on  children  of  three  full  years.  There  is  danc- 
ing on  the  part  of  the  maidens,  while  the  young  men  stand 
about  and  select  from  the  dancing  throng  their  wives.  A 
sheep  is  sacrificed,  its  flesh  cooked  and  eaten  near  sun- 
down at  a  feast,  while  the  entrails  are  left  hanging  on  a 
trophy  bush,  or  sacred  tree.  After  the  feast  the  dancing 
begins  again  and  continues  into  the  evening.6  Among 

1  For  a  concise  sketch  of  the  history  of  the  rite  in  Israel  see  the  article 
"circumcision"  by  McAllister  in  Hastings's  Dictionary  of  the  Bible,  or 
by  Benzinger  in  the  Encyclopedia  Biblica.  For  the  Abyssinian  custom, 
cf.  Wylde's  Modern  Abyssinian,  p.  161. 

a  Bk.  II,  ch.  104. 

8  Josephus,  Ant.  I,  122 ;  Sozomen,  H.  E.,  VI,  38 ;  Philostorgius,  H.  E., 
Ill,  4.  Cf.  also  Nowack's  Archaologie,  Vol.  I,  p.  167. 

4  See  Haarbriicker's  translation  of  Sharastani,  Vol.  II,  p.  354. 

6  Doughty's  Arabia  Deserta,  Vol.  I,  pp.  340,  341. 


100  SEMITIC   ORIGINS 


other  Arabs  it  is  the  custom  to  make  the  child  ride  on  the 
back  of  the  sacrificial  sheep.1  At  Mecca  there  still  exists 
a  similar  custom  of  performing  circumcision  in  connection 
with  a  sacrificial  feast.2  Here  the  operation  is  performed 
from  the  third  to  the  seventh  year,  and  is  performed  on 
female  children  as  well  as  upon  male. 

The  circumstances  under  which  it  is  performed  in 
Arabia  point  to  the  origin  of  circumcision  as  a  sacrifice  to 
the  goddess  of  fertility,  by  which  the  child  was  placed 
under  her  protection  and  its  reproductive  powers  conse- 
crated to  her  service.  The  slaughter  of  the  sheep  was 
originally  not  simply  for  domestic  purposes,  since  all 
slaughter  of  domestic  animals  was  sacrificial.3  The  con- 
secration of  the  child  by  such  an  offering,  in  addition  to 
the  regular  sacrificial  victim,  is  parallel  to  the  sacrifice  of 
chastity  by  which  women  consecrated  their  wombs  to  the 
goddess  of  childbearing  at  Babylonia  and  Byblos.*  In  the 
dance  and  the  selection  of  future  wives  by  the  young  Arabs 
in  the  Bedawi  ritual  we  see  a  survival  in  a  purified  form 
of  an  old  love  feast,  such  as  must  have  accompanied  in  one 
form  or  another  all  the  feasts  of  the  Semitic  mother  god- 
dess, and  to  which  Augustine  and  Ephraem  bear  witness.5 
Originally  circumcision  seems  to  have  been  a  preparation 
for  connubium.6  Its  transfer  to  infancy  may,  as  W.  R. 

1  Doughty,  op.  cit.,  Vol.  I,  p.  391. 

2  See  Snouck  Hurgronje's  Mekka,  Vol.  II,  pp.  141-143.    Among  the 
Hamitic  Somalia  of  East  Africa,  who  are  deeply  penetrated  with  Arabic 
influence,  boys  are  circumcised  at  seven  years  of  age,  and  girls  are  infibu- 
lated  at  ten.     The  hair  is  cut  short  at  the  same  time,  so  that  a  long-haired 
person    and   an    uncircumcised    are    identical.      Cf.    Reinisch,   Somali- 
Sprache,  pp.  110,  111,  etc. ;  Bd.  I  of  his  Siidarabische  Expedition.     Wien, 
1900. 

*  See  Smith's  Edigion  of  the  Semites,  2d  ed.,  pp.  234,  241,  and  307. 

4  Herodotus,  I,  199,  and  Lucian's  De  Syria  Dea,  §  6.  Cf.  Hebraica, 
Vol.  X,  pp.  21  and  31. 

6  Cf.  Ephraem,  Opera,  Vol.  II,  pp.  458,  459 ;  Augustine,  De  Civitate. 
Dei,  II,  4  ;  also  Hebraica,  Vol.  X,  pp.  51  and  69. 

6  Cf.  Gen.  34,  and  also  Ex.  4116,  where  circumcision  is  connected  with 
the  idea  of  "bridegroom." 


SEMITIC   RELIGIOUS  ORIGINS  101 

Smith  suggests,1  have  been  a  later  development.  Circum- 
cision thus  receives  for  the  Semitic  peoples  a  fitting 
explanation,  and  an  explanation  not  out  of  harmony  with 
that  usually  given  it  by  modern  scholars  for  other  peoples. 

Circumcision  was  also  practised  by  the  Egyptians  at  a 
very  early  date,2  and  Herodotus  was  so  impressed  by  their 
practice  of  it  that  he  claims  that  others  learned  it  from 
them.3  According  to  Strabo  they,  like  the  modern 
Meccans,  circumcised  both  men  and  women.4  The  Gallas, 
another  Hamitic  tribe,  also  practise  it.5  The  connection 
of  this  Hamitic  practice  with  the  Semitic  will  be  consid- 
ered with  some  other  similar  matters  at  a  future  point  in 
the  discussion. 

In  a  system  of  religious  thought,  in  which  the  sexual 
functions  of  the  animal  world  found  a  counterpart  and  an 
apotheosis  in  the  processes  of  the  sacred  tree,  and  in  which 
free  love  was  at  certain  times  a  religious  duty,  what  more 
natural  than  that  the  organs  of  reproduction  should  be 
placed  under  the  care  of  the  tutelary  divinity  by  such  a 
sacrifice  ?  Indeed,  the  Arabs  to-day,  who  are  much  with 
flocks  and  herds,  declare  that  only  in  man  is  an  impediment 
like  the  foreskin  found,  and  wonder  how  it  is  possible  for 
reproduction  to  occur  among  uncircumcised  Christians.6 
Possibly  their  remote  Semitic  ancestors  reasoned  in  the 
same  way,  and  so  conceived  the  necessity  of  making  this 
sacrifice  to  the  goddess  of  productivity,  that  they  as  well 
as  other  creatures  might  receive  the  blessing  of  fertility. 

Trumbull  has  collected  a  convincing  array  of  instances 
of  the  sacred  character  of  the  threshold  among  the  Baby- 
lonians, Phoanicians,  Hebrews,  and  Arabs,7  which  prove 

1  Cf.    Bel.  of  Sem.,   2  ed.,  p.  328 ;  Wellhausen,  Heidentum,  2  ed., 
p.  175. 

2  Ebers,  Aegypten  und  die  Bucher  Moses,  Vol.  I,  p.  283. 
«  Bk.  II,  104. 

«  Strabo,  Bk.  XVII,  2s. 

8  Macalister  in  Hastings's  Dictionary  of  the  Bible,  Vol.  I,  p.  444. 

6  Doughty's  Arabia  Deserta,  Vol.  I,  pp.  341  and  410. 

7  TJie  Threshold  Covenant,  Philadelphia,  1896,  pp.  108-164. 


102  SEMITIC  ORIGINS 


that  the  threshold  among  the  Semites,  as  among  people  in 
many  parts  of  the  world,  had  the  sanctity  of  an  altar. 
The  explanation  which  Trumbull  offers  for  the  sacredness 
of  the  threshold  throughout  the  world  is  that  primitive 
men  everywhere  make,  by  some  common  psychological 
process,  a  connection  between  the  relation  between  the 
threshold  and  doorpost  on  the  one  hand,  and  the  relation 
of  the  sexes  on  the  other.1  The  result  of  our  investigation 
into  Semitic  religious  origins  confirms  this  conclusion  in  so 
far  as  it  applies  to  the  Semites.  A  people  who,  like  them, 
attributed  to  the  sexual  relation  the  beginnings  of  intelli- 
gent life,  the  knowledge  of  clothing,  agriculture,  and  the 
arts  of  civilization,  and  who,  in  their  conceptions  of 
divinity,  in  their  religious  rites,  and  in  their  social  organ- 
ization, gave  such  prominence  to  sexual  relations  and 
functions,  would  most  naturally  invest  the  threshold,  the 
approach  to  the  tent  or  house  where  the  fruits  of  these 
divinely  ordained  functions  were  sheltered,  with  something 
of  the  sanctity  of  the  function  itself.  This  would  be 
especially  easy  for  early  man  as  soon  as  any  structure 
beyond  a  mere  tent  formed  his  dwelling.  The  old  Semitic 
door  sockets  and  posts  would  by  their  very  form  readily 
suggest  the  organs  of  fertility.  No  doubt  the  nosb  or 
masseba,  which  bore  a  general  resemblance  to  a  phallus, 
afterward  became  the  symbol  of  Semitic  deity  for  a  similar 
reason. 

With  the  view  of  the  nature  of  Ishtar  here  set  forth, 
the  meaning  of  her  name,  I  believe,  coincides.  It  is  true 
that  so  many  varying  etymologies  of  the  name  have  been 
offered  that  it  is  precarious  to  build  much  on  an  argument 
derived  from  this  source,  and  yet  the  confirmation  afforded 
to  the  views  expressed  above  by  what  I  believe  to  be  the 
true  etymology  renders  it  worthy  of  a  little  discussion. 

Driver2  still  refers  the  name,  as  Schrader3  and  Sayce4 

1  Op.  cit.,  pp.  193-203. 

2  "  Ashtoreth  "  in  Hastings's  Dictionary  of  the  Bible. 

« KAT*,  p.  179.  *  Hibbert  Lectures  for  1887,  p.  252  ff. 


SEMITIC   RELIGIOUS  ORIGINS  103 

did  a  decade  or  two  ago,  to  a  non-Semitic  origin.  Delitzsch, 
who  held  this  view  in  1883  and  1886,  had  abandoned  it  as 
long  ago  as  1889. l  That  so  admirable  a  scholar  as  Driver 
can  still  hold  this  view  is  no  doubt  due  to  the  fact  that 
the  historical  and  religious  bearings  of  the  problem  have 
not  sufficiently  claimed  his  attention.  It  can  hardly  be 
regarded  as  probable  that  a  divinity  so  primitive  as  Ishtar 
and  whose  cult  was  so  widely  diffused  as  to  be  wor- 
shipped in  every  Semitic  territory,  should  be  known  in 
them  all  by  a  name  borrowed  from  a  foreign  source  by 
one  of  the  Semitic  nations  after  the  Semitic  dispersion 
had  begun.  Such  an  improbable  view  ought  not  to  be 
maintained  if  a  Semitic  etymology  which  is  even  plausible 
can  be  suggested.  That  this  borrowing  did  not  occur  is 
indicated  by  the  presence  of  the  letter  'ayin  at  the  begin- 
ning of  the  name  in  all  the  Semitic  languages  except  the 
Babylonian- Assyrian.  From  this  latter  tongue  the  'ayin 
had  disappeared,  and  it  is  hardly  conceivable  that  the 
'ayin  would  be  present  in  all  the  other  languages  if  the 
name  had  come  to  them  from  a  Babylonian  source. 

Most  scholars  regard  the  name  as  of  Semitic  origin  and 
have  offered  for  it  various  etymologies.2  The  etymology 
proposed  in  my  "  Ishtar  Cult "  derived  the  name  from  the 

1  Cf.  his  Hebrew  Language  viewed  in  the  Light  of  Assyrian  Research, 
p.  11,  and  Prolegomena  eines  neues  Hebraisch-Aramaisches  Worterbuch, 
p.  138,  with  his  Assyrian  Grammar,  p.  181. 

2  See,  e.g.,  Haupt,  ZDMG.,  Vol.  XXXIV,  p.  758,  and  Moore's  "  Ashto- 
reth  "  in  the  Encyc.  Bib.  in  addition  to  references  below.    The  following 
proposed  etymologies  are  worthy  of  mention :  1.   Haupt  holds  that  it  is  a 
feminine  form  of  the  stem  of  the  name  of  the  Assyrian  god  Ashur  (As- 
shur),  Ishtar  being  written  for  Itshar  (quoted  by  Tiele,  Actes  d.  6me 
Cong.  Inter,  d.  Orient.,  Ft.  II,  p.  497,  n.,  and  reiterated  by  Haupt,  Amer. 
Jour,  of  Philology,  Vol.  VIII,  p.  278,  n.,  also  his  Assyrian  E  Vowel,  1887, 
p.  16,  n.).  If  the  name  of  the  god  Ashur  be  derived,  as  is  supposed  below 
(Chapter  V),  from  the  'ashera  or  post  which  marked  the  limits  of  the 
primitive  sanctuary,  this  view  would  be  plausible,  were  it  not  for  the  con- 
fusion which  it  assumes  from  'aleph  to  'ayin.    That  confusion,  however 
natural  in  Assyrian  and  Babylonian,  can  hardly  have  occurred  in  primi- 
tive Semitic.     2.  Jensen  (Zeit.  f.  Keilschr.  For.,  Vol.  I,  p.  306),  and  Zim- 
mern  {Babylonische  Busspsalmen,  p.  39),  hold  that  the  t  is  inserted  after 


104  SEMITIC   ORIGINS 


root  'athara,  "  to  fall," 1  and  took  the  name  to  be  a  reflex- 
ive with  both  a  transitive  and  an  intransitive  meaning ; 
the  former  of  which  meant  to  "  cast  forth "  or  "  cause  to 
fall,"  applying  to  the  mother ;  the  latter,  "  that  which  is 
cast  forth,"  or  offspring,  being  applied  in  Deut.  713>  284<  18 
to  lambs.  To  this  derivation  Driver  objects2  —  and  the 
objection  is  a  forcible  one  —  that  the  root  'athara  means 
not  simply  "  to  fall,"  but  "  to  stumble,"  "  to  trip,"  which, 
he  urges,  makes  the  etymology  unsatisfactory.  This  ob- 
jection applies,  as  I  now  think,  not  to  the  etymology  itself, 
but  to  the  particular  meaning  which  I  attached  to  it. 
Lagarde  had  pointed  the  way  to  the  true  solution  in  a 
short  article  published  as  long  ago  as  1881,3  but  when  the 
"  Ishtar  Cult "  was  written  his  article  escaped  my  atten- 
tion. He  connected  the  name,  as  I  did,  with  the  root 
'athara,  but  called  attention  also  to  some  important  varia- 
tions in  the  meaning  of  the  root  which  Lane  had  exhibited 
in  his  lexicon,4  and  which  the  connection  of  the  goddess 
with  the  palm  tree  now  enables  us  to  appreciate.  While 
in  Arabic  literature  the  stem  ordinarily  has  the  meaning 
"  fall "  or  "  stumble,"  'dtMr  means  "  a  channel  that  is  dug 
for  the  purpose  of  irrigating  a  palm  tree  such  as  is  termed 
ba'aV ;  'athr,  "such  as  is  watered  by  rain  alone";  and 
'aihir,  "dust,"  "earth,"  or  "mud." 

The  idea  that  Ba'al  was  the  lord  of  self-irrigated  land 
has  been  shown  by  Robertson  Smith  to  belong  to  Syria.5 

the  second  radical  and  that  the  name  is  to  be  derived  from  the  root  hashar 
=  'ashar,  "  to  unite."  This  etymology  is  far  less  objectionable  and  much 
might  be  said  in  its  favor.  Another  one  will,  however,  be  found  to  fit  the 
conditions  more  perfectly.  3.  Georg  Hoffmann  derives  it  (  Ueber  einige 
phon.  Inschriften,  Gottingen,  1889,  p.  22,  n.),  by  a  like  method  of  forma- 
tion from  the  root  'ashar,  Aramaic  'athar,  "  to  be  voluptuous,"  a  deriva- 
tion too  abstract  in  its  meaning  to  be  primitive. 

1  Hebraica,  Vol.  X,  pp.  69-71. 

2  Hastings's  Dictionary  of  the  Bible,  Vol.  I,  p.  169,  n. 

8  "  Astarte "  in  Nachrichten  v.  d.  Konigl.   Gesellschaft  der  Wissen- 
tchaften  zu  Gott.,  1881,  pp.  396-400. 
4  Arabic  Lexicon,  p.  1953. 
6 Religion  of  the  Semites,  2d  ed.,  pp.97  ff.  and  109  ff.     Smith  held 


SEMITIC   RELIGIOUS  ORIGINS  105 

He  also  held  that  the  term  baal  land  was  afterward  bor- 
rowed by  the  Arabs.  The  term  baal  for  an  irrigated 
palm  tree  would  in  any  case  be  late,  and  must  have  sup- 
planted an  earlier  term.  That  earlier  term  was,  I  think, 
connected  with  the  root  'athara.  This  is  borne  out  by 
the  statement  which  Robertson  Smith  cites  from  Bokhari 
(Bulac  vocalized  edition)  which  makes  'athari  synony- 
mous with  "what  is  watered  by  the  sky  and  by  foun- 
tains." l  Smith  thought  that  this  term  was  derived  from 
the  name  of  the  god  Athtar,  but  from  our  preceding  dis- 
cussion it  seems  more  probable  that  the  derivation  was 
the  other  way,  or  that  both  came  simultaneously  from  a 
common  root.  It  is  probable,  therefore,  that  in  primitive 
Semitic  'athara  was  connected  with  naturally  watered 
land,  and  that  'athtar  meant,  in  its  transitive  sense,  "  she 
who  waters,"  or  "she  who  makes  fruitful,"  while  in  the 
intransitive  sense  it  might  apply  to  that  which  was 
"watered,"  "fertilized,"  or  "produced,"  and  so  could 
come  in  course  of  time  to  mean  "offspring,"  and  as  in 
Deut.  713,  etc.,  "lambs."2  This  view  suits  the  agricul- 
tural and  social  conditions  which  the  foregoing  pages 
have  shown  to  have  been  prevalent  in  Arabia.  The  Be- 
dawi,  coming  in  from  the  arid  desert  to  a  green  and  fruit- 
that  agriculture,  even  to  the  cultivation  of  the  date-palm,  was  borrowed 
by  the  Sabaeans  from  Syria.  Since  the  latter  has  been  proven  above  to 
be  incorrect,  it  may  well  be  that  the  term  baal  originated  in  Sabaea  or 
Arabia.  It  could  not  even  then,  however,  be  as  old  as  'athur.  See 
below,  Chapter  IV. 

1  Smith,  Ibid.  p.  99,  n  2. 

4  On  this  view  of  the  etymology  the  meaning  of  the  Arabic  'athara, 
Heb.  'ashar,  and  Aram,  'athar  are  all  explained.  'Ath&r  means  accord- 
ing to  Lane  "  a  pit  dug  for  a  lion  or  other  animal  that  he  may  fall  into  it 
in  order  that  he  may  be  taken."  As  noted  in  the  text  another  form  of 
the  word  signifies  "irrigating  ditch  for  a  palm  tree."  The  idea  of  falling 
may  have  become  connected  with  the  root  from  the  catching  of  wild  ani- 
mals in  deep  irrigating  ditches.  In  time  this  meaning  supplanted  the 
original  one.  The  idea  of  stumbling  would  naturally  connect  itself  with 
the  root  from  the  idea  of  falling  into  such  ditches.  From  the  idea  of  irri- 
gation would  come  the  idea  of  fertility,  whence  the  Hebrew,  Aram. ,  and 
Syr.  meanings  "  to  be  rich,"  "  voluptuous,"  etc.,  would  easily  follow. 


106  SEMITIC  ORIGINS 


ful  oasis,  would  naturally  say,  "  the  self-irrigating  or  fruit- 
producing  goddess  has  her  abode  here."  That  oasis  thus 
became  to  him  a  garden  of  his  god,  its  water  and  trees  visi- 
ble representatives  of  his  deities.  The  society  in  which  he 
lived  was  one  of  great  sexual  freedom  in  which  the  mother 
was  the  head  of  the  family ;  he  therefore  naturally  thought 
of  his  gods  as  a  mother  and  son.  The  trees  in  the  oasis 
were  palm  trees;  the  sex  relations  of  the  trees  and  of 
human  beings  were  all  combined  in  his  mind  in  the  way 
already  described,  so  that  the  "  self-waterer  "  was  for  him 
the  "fruit-producer,"  "the  creator  of  life,"  "the  mother 
goddess,"  the  goddess  of  love.  Such  was  the  religion  of 
the  Semites  in  their  primitive  home  while  they  were  yet 
one  people. 

Robertson  Smith's  picture  of  their  sanctuaries,  their 
gods,  their  totemistic  clan  organization,  their  sacrifices, 
and  their  animistic  conception  of  spirits,  abides ;  we  only 
see  more  clearly  that  the_  chief  deity  of  the  clan  was  at 
this  primitive  time  a  goddess,  and  that  in  so  far  as  a  male 
deity  played  any  considerable  part  he  was  her  son  and 
reflex.1 

No  doubt  it  will  be  distasteful  to  many  to  believe  that 

1I  have  pointed  out  elsewhere  (article  "Asherah"  in  Jewish  Encyclo- 
pedia), that  in  all  probability  the  limits  of  the  primitive  Semitic  sanctu- 
ary were  marked,  even  before  the  Semitic  dispersion,  by  wooden  posts 
called  "  asherahs  "  or  "  athrahs,"  and  that  in  course  of  time  the  name  of 
the  post  was  in  certain  localities,  as  in  South  Arabia  and  the  Lebanon  re- 
gion of  Syria,  applied  to  the  goddess  herself.  The  evidence  for  this  state- 
ment is  that  asherah  means  "  sanctuary  "  in  the  Phoenician  inscription 
from  Ma' sub,  and  its  philological  equivalent  ashirtu,  ashrati  or  eshritu, 
eshr&ti  is  commonly  used  in  Assyrian  for  sanctuary,  while  a  goddess  Ath- 
erat  has  been  found  in  a  Minsean  inscription  (Hommel  in  Expository 
Times,  Jan.,  1900,  p.  190),  and  a  goddess  Ashirta  in  the  region  of  Leba- 
non (Sayce,  ZA.,  Vol.  VI,  p.  161,  Epping  and  Strassmaier,  ZA.,  Vol.  VI, 
p.  241 ;  Winckler  in  Schrader's  KB.,  Vol.  V,  p.  124,  and  passim ;  Reisner 
in  Mittheilungen  of  the  Berlin  Museum,  p.  92,  and  Jensen,  ZA.,  Vol.  XI, 
p.  302  ff.).  Cf.  also  below,  Chapter  VI.  Hommel  (op.  cit. )  fancies  that  he 
sees  in  the  original  form  of  the  ideogram  for  Ishtar  a  post  on  which  hangs 
the  skin  of  an  animal  (cf.  Thureau  Dangin's  L'Ecriture  cuneiforme,  No. 
294,  and  Smith's  Religion  of  the  Semites,  2d  ed.,  p.  435  ff. 


SEMITIC   RELIGIOUS  ORIGINS  107 

— "  ~ 

the  beginnings  of  Semitic  religion  as  they  were  conceived  g, 

by  the  Semites  themselves  go  back  to  sexual  relations.  It 
must  be  remembered  that  such  things  were  thought  of 
and  treated  much  more  innocently  in  primitive  times  than 
would  be  indicated  by  a  similar  treatment  now.  In  reality, 
too,  the  Semite  actually  hit  upon  a  feature  of  human  life 
which  is,  as  scientific  investigation  is  showing  us,  inti- 
mately connected  with  religious  feeling  at  the  present 
day1  and  has  had  more  real  influence  in  developing 
moral,  altruistic,  and  humanitarian  feeling  in  the  past  than 
any  other.  The  prolongation  of  the  period  of  helplessness 
in  infancy  and  the  consequent  development  of  maternal 
love  out  of  which  feelings  of  obligation  and  conscience 
have  grown  is  now  seen  to  lie  at  the  root  of  the  moral  and 
religious  progress  of  the  race.2  The  prinriflyft  Se""t 
conception  of  his  goddess  and  her  service,  to  which  he 


attributed  the  beginnings  of  intelligence 

was  in  a  rude,  blind  wttfr  an  emphasis  of  t.ha  aa-me 


Considering  the  animal  passions  of  human  nature,  it  is 
little  wonder  that  the  processes  of  procreation  often  at- 
tracted more  attention  than  the  offspring  itself ;  but  the 
delight  which  all  Semites  took,  and  still  take,  in  their 
children,  is  witness  to  the  fact  that  such  religion  was 
never  wholly  degenerate.  Semitiq  sacrificet  commensaLaa 
Robertson  Smith  has  shown  it  to  be,3  embodies  in  a  gross 
way  the  principle  of  the  religious  life  which  is  expressed 
in  the  highest  spiritual  form  in  John  1723 :  "  I  in  them 
and  thou  in  me  that  they  may  be  perfected  into  one ;  "  so 
the  Semitic  conception  of  deity  as  we  have  traced  it  em- 
bodies the  truth  —  grossly  indeed,  but  nevertheless  em- 
bodies it  —  that  "  God  is  love." 

This  religion,  containing  a  kernel  of  perpetual  truth, 

1  See  Leuba  in  Journal  of  Psychology,  1896 ;  Starbuck's  Psychology 
of  Religion,  New  York,  1900,  Part  I,  on  conversion  ;  and  Coe's  Spiritual 
Life,  New  York,  1900. 

2  See  Druminond's  Ascent  of  Man,  New  York,  1895,  chs.  vii  and  viii, 
and  Fiske's  Through  Nature  to  God,  Boston,  1899,  pp.  96-130. 

8  Religion  of  the  Semites,  Lectures  VII  to  XI. 


108  SEMITIC  ORIGINS 


although  it  was  formulated  thus  crudely,  formed  the  sub- 
stratum of  the  religion  of  the  Semites  in  historical  times. 
It  was  modified  here  and  there  by  economic  changes  and 
the  consequent  change  in  social  conditions  which  followed. 
At  other  times  foreign  influences  combined  with  these  to 
effect  a  transformation.  In  Israel  its  baser  elements  were 
eliminated  by  the  prophets,  who  erected  on  its  foundation 
a  structure  of  spiritual  religion.1  Traces  of  these  primi- 
tive conceptions  appear  throughout  the  Semitic  world  as 
witnesses  to  the  perpetual  influence  of  these  fundamental 
conceptions  of  religion  and  life  ;  and  owing  to  its  influ- 
ence through  the  Phoenicians  upon  the  Greeks  and  through 
Greek  society  upon  the  early  Christians,  and  also  its  in- 
fluence on  the  Hebrews  and  through  them  upon  the 
church,  its  effects  in  many  ways  abide  to  the  present  hour.2 
In  all  Semitic  life,  religious  and  social,  the  hag  or  re- 
ligious festival  has  always  played  an  important  part. 
Among  the  ancient  Hebrews  there  were  three  such  festi- 
vals which  all  readers  of  the  Bible  will  readily  recall,  —  the 
Passover,  near  the  vernal  equinox,  the  feast  of  Weeks  at 
the  end  of  the  harvest,  seven  weeks  after  the  Passover, 
and  the  feast  of  Ingathering  or  Tabernacles  at  the  time  of 
the  grape  harvest  in  the  seventh  month.  Of  these,  recent 
Biblical  scholars  regard  the  first  only  as  primitive,  and 
hold  that  the  others  were  agricultural  festivals  adopted  by 
the  Israelites  after  the  settlement  in  Canaan.3  There  is 
much  evidence,  however,  to  show  that  two  of  these  three 
festivals  have  their  roots  in  primitive  Semitic  practices,  and 
that  what  the  settlement  in  Canaan  did  for  them  was  not 
to  originate  them,  but  to  give  them  a  new  interpretation. 

1  See  below,  Chapter  VII. 

2  See  below,  Chapter  VIII. 

8  Wellhausen,  Prolegomena  zur  Geschichte  Israels,  6th  ed.,  1899, 
p.  91  ;  Reste  arabische  Heidentnms,  2d  ed.,  p.  98  ;  W.  Robertson  Smith, 
Prophets  of  Israel,  2d  ed.,  pp.  38,  56,  and  384,  also  Old  Testament  in  the 
Jewish  Church,  2d  ed.,  pp.  240,  269;  Harding  in  Hastings' s  Dictionary 
of  the  Bible,  Vol.  I,  p.  860  ;  and  Budde,  Religion  of  Isi-ael  to  the  Exile, 
p.  73. 


SEMITIC   RELIGIOUS  ORIGINS  109 

All  scholars  agree  that  the  paschal  portion  of  the  Pass- 
over festival,  as  distinguished  from  the  unleavened  bread 
features  of  it,  existed  in  the  nomadic  life  of  pre-Canaan- 
itish  days.  This  sacrifice  of  a  sheep  occurred  in  the 
month  Nisan,  i.e.  in  the  spring,  or  at  the  beginning  of 
the  Oriental  summer.  Similarly  in  Cyprus,  as  we  learn 
from  Johannes  Lydus,1  a  sacrifice  of  a  sheep  was  made 
to  Ashtart.  This  occurred  also  in  the  spring,  on  the  2d  of 
April.  In  Babylonia  there  was  also  a  New  Year's  festival, 
which  was  held  in  Nisan,  which,  at  different  times  and  in 
different  places,  was  associated  with  different  gods.  When 
we  can  first  trace  it  in  the  days  of  Gudea,  it  is  the  festival 
of  Bau,2  one  of  the  mother  goddesses,  into  which  the 
primitive  Semitic  mother  goddess  had  developed  in  the 
peculiar  Babylonian  conditions.3  Later,  in  consequence 
of  the  forces  which  wrought  the  transformations  described 
below,4  it  appears  as  a  feast  of  Marduk  of  Babylon.5  In 
the  earlier  time  when  we  can  trace  it  as  a  festival  of  the 
goddess,  the  offerings  were  lambs,  sheep,  cattle,  etc. 
Wellhausen,  Robertson  Smith,  and  Winckler  have  shown 
that  in  Arabia  the  festival  in  the  month  Ragab  originally 
corresponded  both  in  time  and  in  character  to  these  spring 
festivals  among  the  other  Semites.6  Two  characteristics 
are  common  to  all  these  festivals,  —  they  occurred  in  the 
springtime,  and  they  involved  the  sacrifice  of  lambs.  In 
Arabia  the  domestic  animals  bring  forth  once  a  year,  and 
the  yeaning  time  is  in  the  spring.7  In  Ex.  34,  the  Yah- 

1  Cf.  his  De  Mensibus,  Bk.  IV,  45,  and  Hebraica,  Vol.  X,  p.  45. 
'See  KB.,  Vol.  Ill1,  pp.  59,  61,  69,  and  71 ;  also  Jastrow's  Eeligion 
of  Babylonia  and  Assyria,  pp.  69  and  677  ff. 
1  See  below,  Chapter  V. 
«  Chapter  V. 

6  KB.,  Vol.  IIP,  p.  15,  and  Jastrow,  ibid.,  p.  677. 

8  Wellhausen,  Beste  arabische  Heidentums,  2d  ed.,  p.  97  ff. ;  Robert- 
son Smith,  Religion  of  the  Semites,  2d  ed.,  p.  227  ff. ;  and  Winckler, 
Altorientalische  Forschungen,  2te  Reihe,  Vol.  II,  pp.  324-350,  especially 
p.  344.  On  the  character  of  the  offerings  at  the  Regab  feast,  cf.  Smith, 
ibid.,  n. 

7  Doughty's  Arabia  Deserta,  Vol.  I,  p.  429. 


110  SEMITIC   ORIGINS 


wistic  Decalogue,  the  earliest  of  existing  Hebrew  law- 
books,  this  spring  festival  is  connected  with  the  gift  of 
firstlings  to  Yah  we  (vv.  18-20).  There  can  be  little 
doubt,  in  view  of  these  facts,  that  originally  the  nomadic 
Semites  kept  a  spring  festival  to  the  mother  goddess  of 
fertility.  The  lambs,  kids,  and  young  camels  were  her 
gifts,  and  to  her  it  was  right  that  a  joyous  feast  should  be 
held  in  honor  of  her  gracious  blessings. 

The  circumcision  festivals  which  were  witnessed  by 
Doughty  occurred  at  the  same  time  of  the  year.1  Those 
feasts  are  still  accompanied,  as  we  noted  above,  by  the 
sacrifice  of  a  sheep,  the  dancing  of  girls,  and  the  selection 
of  wives.  We  cannot,  therefore,  be  far  wrong  in  regard- 
ing them  as  a  survival  of  this  old  spring  festival.  As 
already  pointed  out,  Ephraem  and  Augustine  described 
the  festival  of  the  Semitic  mother  goddess,  as  it  was 
known  to  them,  as  lewd.2  Originally,  therefore,  the 
spring  festival  was  accompanied  by  the  sacrifice  of  maiden 
virtue,  —  a  sacrifice  out  of  which  grew  the  custom  de- 
scribed by  Herodotus,3  as  well  as  the  sacrifice  of  the  fore- 
skin of  youths.  Probably  acts  of  free  love  on  the  part 
of  all  were  also  a  part  of  the  primitive  ritual.4 

The  spring  festival  in  this  far-off  primeval  time  was 
then  an  occasion  when  the  mother  goddess  was  honored 
by  sacrifices  to  her  of  some  of  all  her  many  gifts  of  ani- 
mal fertility  in  the  ways  which  were  thought  to  be  pleas- 
ing to  her.  The  time  was  appropriate,  since  she  was 
revealing  in  the  spring  her  power  through  the  offspring 
of  the  flocks  and  herds,  through  the  flowering  date-palms 
where  her  acts  of  fertilization  were  taking  place,  and 
through  the  nature  which  she  had  given  men. 

So  the  infant  was  consecrated  to  her  service  by  circum- 

1  Doughty's,  Arabia  Deserta,  Vol.  I,  pp.  340-342. 

2  Ephraem,  Opera,  Vol.  II,  p.  458  ff.,  and  Augustine,  De  Civitate  Dei, 
Bk.  II,  4.     Cf.  Hebraica,  Vol.  X,  pp.  51  and  59. 

»  Bk.  I,  199.     Cf.  Hebraica,  Vol.  X,  p.  20. 

*  Such,  as  I  take  it,  was  the  original  meaning  of  the  dance  described 
by  Doughty,  ibid.,  p.  341. 


SEMITIC   RELIGIOUS  ORIGINS  111 

cision,  the  maiden  by  the  sacrifice  of  her  chastity,  and  all 
by  acts  of  free  love.  At  the  same  time  the  bonds  of  tribal 
kinship  were  more  closely  knit  by  the  commensal  meal, 
which  was  no  doubt  accompanied  by  boisterous  manifesta- 
tions of  joy,  and  by  songs,  which  would  be  extremely 
coarse  when  judged  by  the  more  refined  standards  of  later 
ages. 

Wellhausen  has  made  it  tolerably  clear  that  in  the  pre- 
Islamic  days  the  Arabs  divided  the  year  roughly  into 
halves,1  and  that  the  second  half  which  originally  began 
in  the  autumn  was  inaugurated  by  the  Safar  festival  as 
the  other  half  was  by  the  Ragab  festival.  This  feast  he 
coordinates  with  the  Hebrew  feast  of  Tabernacles,  which 
came  in  the  month  Tishri  and  which  represented  to  the 
Palestinian  Hebrews  the  conclusion  of  the  grape  gather- 
ing. No  trace  of  this  feast  is  found  in  Babylonia,  though 
Jastrow  conjectures 2  with  some  probability  that  at  some 
time  a  sacred  New  Year's  feast  occurred  in  the  autumn 
in  some  part  of  Babylonia,  since  the  Jews,  who  derived 
their  method  of  reckoning  time  from  thence,  begin  their 
New  Year  with  Tishri.  The  character  of  this  feast  among 
the  primitive  Semites  it  is  not  hard  to  guess.  The  har- 
vest of  the  date-palm  comes  at  just  this  time,8  when  the 
Arabs  give  themselves  to  gladness  and  hospitality,*  and 
the  nomads  visit  the  oases  to  lay  in  a  supply  of  dates  for 
the  winter.6  We  cannot  doubt  but  that  in  ancient  times 
such  an  occasion  was  made  a  festival  to  the  goddess  of 
the  palm  tree  or  that  it  was  characterized  by  orgies  such 

1  Rente  arabische  Heide.ntums,  2d  ed.,  p.  96  ff.     Cf.  Winckler,  Alt- 
orientalische  Forschungen,  2te  Reihe,  Vol.  II,  p.  344,  who  makes  the 
same  division  as  Wellhausen,  but  makes  it  begin  with  Muharran,  the 
month  before  Safar. 

2  Religion  of  Babylonia  and  Assyria,  p.  681.     Cf.  Muss-Arnolt  in 
JBL.,  Vol.  XI,  p.  160  ff. 

8  See  Doughty's  Arabia  Deserta,  Vol.  I,  pp.  657  and  661 ;  also  Zwemer's 
Arabia,  p.  125. 

4  Wellsted's  Travels  in  Arabia,  Vol.  II,  p.  122. 
6  Doughty,  i&id.,  as  n.  3. 


112  SEMITIC   ORIGINS 


as  would  befit  the  rejoicings  of  a  people  possessing  such 
a  social  organization  and  pervaded  by  such  religious  ideas. 
In  the  earliest  times  the  oases  were  himas,1  or  tracts  sacred 
to  the  gods ;  the  gathering  of  the  dates  took  place  there- 
fore in  a  sacred  tract  as  well  as  from  a  sacred  tree  and 
would  accordingly  be  naturally  regarded  as  a  religious 
act.  This  autumn  festival  still  survives  in  Abyssinia.  It 
has  been  Christianized  and  is  called  Mascal,  or  the  Cross. 
It  is  celebrated  in  September,  and  a  part  of  its  ritual 
includes  the  lighting  of  fires  on  high  places  before  dawn, 
when  oxen  are  slaughtered  as  in  a  heathen  festival.  It  is 
celebrated,  too,  with  dancing,  drumming  and  playing  the 
sistra  during  the  whole  night.2  Considerable  elements  of 
heathenish  rites  have  entered  into  all  the  phases  of  the 
ritual  of  the  Abyssinian  church,  but  it  is  not  difficult  to 
detect  the  source  whence  this  feast  has  come. 

Of  a  third  festival  we  cannot  be  so  confident.  If  it 
existed  in  primitive  times,  it  must  have  been  connected 
with  the  god  Tammuz.  Traces  of  a  festival  of  the  god 
Tammuz,  preceded  by  wailing  for  him,  are  found  in  Baby- 
lonia, Palestine,  and  Phoenicia.  It  appears  from  the  poem 
known  as  "  Ishtar's  Descent,"  that  there  was  in  Babylonia 
a  "  day  of  Tammuz."  3  It  is  usually  held,  since  the  fourth 
of  the  Babylonian  months  bore  the  name  of  this  god,  that 
it  was  then  that  his  festival  was  celebrated,  and  Jastrow 
on  this  basis  holds  that  it  was  a  solar  festival,  celebrated 
in  the  fourth  month  at  the  approach  of  the  summer  sol- 
stice.4 He,  like  many  others,  connects  this  feast,  which 
was  preceded  by  wailing  for  the  death  of  the  god  and 
celebrated  by  rejoicings  at  his  resurrection,5  as  significant 

1  Smith's  Religion  of  the  Semites,  2d  ed.,  pp.  112,  142-144,  and  ISO- 
IS?  ;  Wellhausen,  Heidentums,  2d  ed.,  p.  105  ff. 

2  See  Bent's  Sacred  City  of  the  Ethiopians,  pp.  53,  83,  84. 

8  Cf.  IV  R.,  p.  31,  rev.  1.  66  ;  Hebraica,  Vol.  IX,  p.  161 ;  and  Jeremias's 
Laben  nach  dem  Tode,  p.  23. 

4  Religion  of  Babylonia  and  Assyria,  p.  682. 

6  Cf .  Lucian,  De  Syria  Dea,  §  6 ;  Hebraica,  Vol.  X,  p.  31  ;  and 
Pietschmann's  Geschichte  der  Phoenizier,  p.  219. 


SEMITIC   RELIGIOUS  ORIGINS  113 

of  the  annual  death  of  vegetation,  which  on  Jastrow's 
interpretation  would  be  due  to  the  burning  heat  of  the 
summer  sun.  It  appears,  however,  that  in  Phoenicia  and 
Palestine  the  festival  was  celebrated  not  in  the  fourth  but 
in  the  sixth  month.  Ezekiel  (ch.  81)  dates  it  according 
to  the  Massoretic  text  at  that  time,  though  the  LXX 
place  it  in  the  fifth  month.  Many  modern  scholars  follow 
the  LXX,  but,  as  it  seems  to  me,  without  sufficient  reason.1 
The  cuneiform  non-Semitic  expression  for  the  sixth  month 
was  "  the  month  of  the  message  of  Ishtar,"  as  though  it 
was  then  that  she  descended  to  the  lower  world.2  The 
name  of  the  sixth  month,  Elul,  has  been  explained  from 
the  wailing  for  Tammuz,2  and  altogether  it  seems  prob- 
able that  the  wailing  originally  occurred  in  the  sixth 
month,  and  was  followed  by  the  festival  of  date  harvest 
at  the  beginning  of  the  seventh,  of  which  we  have  already 
spoken.  If  this  be  the  case,  the  sacrifice  of  chastity  of 
which  Lucian  speaks  in  connection  with  these  rites  at 
Biblos  was  a  survival  from  the  rites  of  joy  with  which 
the  date  harvest  was  celebrated  in  primitive  Semitic 
times.  That  the  feast  of  Tammuz  should  in  some  form 
go  back  to  primitive  Semitic  conditions  is  indicated  by 
the  myth  which  makes  Tammuz  the  son  of  Ishtar  and 
which,  as  we  have  noted,  could  only  have  been  formed  in 
a  society  organized  on  the  lines  of  the  so-called  matri- 
archal clan.  Winckler's  conclusions  as  to  the  old  Arabic 
calendar  include  the  opinion  that  there  was  in  Arabia  a 
similar  summer  festival  in  July-August.3  The  special 
characteristics  of  this  festival  are  not  clearly  known.  It 
seems  likely,  however,  that  it  was  a  survival  from  the  old 
wailing  for  the  death  of  vegetation  which  preceded  the 
glad  festival  of  the  date  harvest.  Primarily,  then,  this 
feast  was  a  sort  of  lent  preceding  the  glad  time  of  the 

1  Cf.  Toy's  Ezekiel,  in  Haupt's  SBOT. 

*  Cf.  Muss-Arnolt  in  JBL.,  Vol.  XI,  pp.  88,  89  ;  and  Brunnow's  Classi- 
fied List  of  Cuneiform  Idiographs,  No.  10759. 

'  Altorientalische  Forschunyen,  2te  Reibe,  Vol.  II,  pp.  336-344. 

i 


114  SEMITIC   ORIGINS 


autumn  festival,  when  the  tree  of  Tammuz  and  Ishtar 
yielded  its  fruit. 

Following  Robertson  Smith,1 1  expressed  in  the  "Ishtar 
Cult "  the  opinion  that  the  wailing  for  Tammuz  was  ori- 
ginally the  wailing  for  a  sacrificial  victim.2  I  still  incline 
to  think  that  this  view  is  right,  although,  as  then,  I 
think  that  at  a  very  early  period  it  may  have  received  a 
new  explanation  which  connected  it  with  the  death  of 
vegetation.  In  the  deserts  of  Arabia  when  the  burning 
summer  sun  dries  up  the  pastures  and  in  consequence 
the  milk  of  the  domestic  animals  largely  fails,  while  the 
summer  heat  renders  life  almost  unendurable,3  it  may 
well  have  seemed  to  the  nomads  that  Tammuz  was  dead. 
Thus  the  wailing,  which  originally  accompanied  the  death 
of  the  victim  at  the  festival,  was,  I  think,  extended  to 
cover  a  portion  of  time  preceding  harvest.  This  produced 
a  period  of  gloom  to  be  turned  to  life  when  harvest  came 
with  its  evidences  of  the  god's  returning  life. 

Robertson  Smith  has  with  great  plausibility  connected 
the  fasting  and  humiliation  of  the  Jewish  Day  of  Atone- 
ment with  this  Tammuz  wailing.4  Such  connection  is 
from  every  point  of  view  exceedingly  probable.  The  Day 
of  Atonement  came  at  the  beginning  of  autumn,  a  fact 
which  confirms  our  view  that  it  originally  occurred  in 
connection  with  the  autumn  feast.5 

If  this  view  be  correct,  it  is  not  difficult  to  understand 
how  the  Tammuz  wailing  and  ritual  may  have  been  trans- 
ferred in  Babylonia  to  the  fourth  month.  The  first  har- 
vest of  wheat  and  barley  is  in  that  country  reaped  at  the 
time  of  the  summer  solstice,  and  at  such  a  time  a  festival 

1  Religion  of  the  Semites,  1st  ed.,  p.  392,  n. 

2  Hebraica,  Vol.  X,  p.  74. 

8  Dough  ty's  Arabia  Deserta,  Vol.  I,  chs.  xvii  and  xviii,  esp.  p.  472  ff. 

*  Religion  of  the  Semites,  Lect.  XI,  esp.  p.  411. 

6  Fraser,  Golden  Bough,  ch.  iii,  connects  the  death  of  Tammuz  with 
the  corn  (wheat)  harvest,  —  the  slaying  of  the  divine  grain.  This  cannot 
have  been  primitive,  on  account  of  the  economic  conditions  of  Arabia,, 
though  possibly  it  was  a  later  agricultural  explanation. 


SEMITIC  RELIGIOUS  ORIGINS  115 

.4 

among  an  agricultural  people  is  a  most  natural  occurrence. 
If  in  order  to  meet  this  need  the  Tammuz  festival  were 
put  forward  a  few  weeks,  the  influence  of  Babylonia  on 
Palestine  in  the  El-Amarna  period  would  lead  (if  local 
influences  had  not  already  done  so)  to  the  establishment 
of  a  festival  at  the  end  of  harvest  there.  This  afterwards 
the  Hebrews  adopted  as  the  feast  of  weeks.  Meantime 
the  direct  influence  of  Arabia  seems  to  have  been  sufficient 
in  Phoenicia  and  Palestine  to  keep  the  original  Tammuz 
festival  at  its  own  period  in  the  autumn  separate  from  the 
festival  at  the  end  of  barley  harvest.  Something  like  this 
may  have  been  the  course  of  development  in  Babylonia. 
The  fact  that  the  fourth  month  bore  the  name  of  Tammuz 
is  a  somewhat  slight  basis  for  such  conjecture,  since  the 
month  may  have  been  given  the  name  for  other  reasons. 

We  conclude,  however,  that  but  two  Semitic  festivals 
were  primitive,  the  festival  of  the  yeaning  time  in  the 
spring  and  the  festival  of  the  date  harvest  in  the  autumn. 
Out  of  these  the  other  festivals  of  the  Semitic  world  have 
been  developed,  except  as  some  of  them  have  been  bor- 
rowed from  the  peoples  of  the  lands  in  which  they  settled. 

If  now  we  turn  to  the  Hamites,  from  whom  originally 
the  Semites  separated  themselves,  we  find  some  indications 
that  their  primitive  institutions  were  similar  to  those  of  the 
primitive  Semites,  if  not  identical  with  them.  Circum- 
cision was,  as  we  have  already  noticed,1  practised  by  the 
Egyptians  and  the  Hamitic  Gallas,  and  Nowack2  and  Ben- 
zinger3  still  hold  with  Herodotus  that  the  Semitic  rite  was 
borrowed  from  Egypt.  Down  to  the  time  of  the  Caesars 
women  and  girls  were  licensed  to  a  life  of  immorality  by 
consecration  to  the  service  of  Amon  at  Thebes.  These 
women  were  held  in  such  high  esteem  that  this  public 
course  of  life  did  not  prevent  them  from  making  good 
marriages  when  age  compelled  them  to  withdraw  from 
this  service.4  Maspero  interprets  this  rightly  as  a  relic  of 

1  See  above,  p.  101.  *  Archceologie,  p.  154. 

a  Archceologie,  Vol.  I,  p.  167.  *  Strabo,  Bk.  XVII,  46. 


116  SEMITIC  ORIGINS 


polyandry.1  In  its  later  stages  this  polyandry  was  endog- 
amous,  like  the  later  polyandry  of  the  Semites,  since  it 
permitted  the  marriage  of  brother  and  sister,  and  some- 
times of  father  and  daughter.  One  of  the  legacies  left  to 
Egypt  by  this  type  of  polyandry  is  the  use  of  the  words 
"brother"  and  "sister"  in  the  sense  of  "lover"  and  "mis- 
tress."2 This  stage  of  the  civilization  is  further  indicated 
by  the  fact  that  in  the  temples  of  the  chief  gods  there 
were  women  devoted  to  purposes  similar  to  those  for  which 
they  were  attached  to  the  temple  of  Amon,  while  in  the 
temples  of  the  female  divinities  they  held  the  chief 
places.3 

Another  reflection  in  the  Egyptian  religion  of  this  state 
of  society  is  found  in  the  conception  of  the  goddess  Isis. 
The  oldest  myths  concerning  her  represent  her  as  an  inde- 
pendent deity,  dwelling  in  the  midst  of  the  ponds  without 
husband  or  lover,  who  gave  birth  spontaneously  to  a  son, 
whom  she  suckled  among  the  reeds,4  —  a  tale  which  can 
only  be  properly  interpreted  as  the  reflection  of  a  society 
in  which  exogamous  polyandry,  of  a  type  resembling  the 
earliest  Semitic  polyandry,  was  practised.  In  later  times 
she  was  said  to  be  married  to  Osiris,  a  fact  which  one 
school  of  mythologists  interpret  as  the  marriage  of  Isis, 
the  Dawn,  to  Osiris,  the  Sun,6  but  which  Maspero,  with 
more  probability,  takes  to  mean  the  marriage  of  Isis,  the 
Earth,  to  Osiris,  the  Nile.6  There  can  be  no  doubt  but 
that  this  latter  myth  is  the  later  of  the  two,  and  is  the 
reflection  of  a  later  social  organization. 

We  have  then  in  the  oldest  Hamitic  civilization  traces 
of  circumcision,  of  polyandry,  of  a  mother  goddess  who 
represented  well-watered  land,  as  among  the  Semites. 

1  Maspe"ro's  Dawn  of  Civilization,  p.  50. 

2  Maspe"ro,  op.  cit.,  p.  51. 
*  Maspero,  op.  cit.,  p.  126. 
4  Maspero,  op.  cit.,  p.  131. 

6  So  Robert  Brown,  Jr.,  Semitic  Influence  in  Hellenic  Mythology,  p.  58. 
Brown  is  a  disciple  of  Max  Miiller  in  the  interpretation  of  mythology. 
6  Maspe'ro,  op.  cit.,  p.  132. 


SEMITIC   RELIGIOUS  ORIGINS  117 

The  date-palm  was  also  known,  and  there  is  at  least  one 
trace  of  it  as  a  god.1 

Among  the  Hamites  who  lived  to  the  west  of  Egypt 
similar  customs  appear.  Thus  Herodotus  tells  us2  that 
the  Nasamones,  a  tribe  of  Berber  Hamites,3  made  yearly 
expeditions  to  a  date-palm  oasis  to  gather  the  fruit,  and 
their  polyandry  and  sexual  customs  in  general  resembled 
closely  much  which  we  find  among  the  Semites. 

With  reference  to  these  institutions  which  the  ancient 
Semites  and  Hamites  had  in  common,  there  are  three 
possible  opinions:  (1)  they  may  have  developed  them 
in  the  early  days  before  the  two  peoples  separated,  when 
as  yet  the  races  were  one ;  (2)  they  may  have  developed 
them  independently  through  the  influence  of  similar  en- 
vironments ;  or  (3)  one  race  may  have  borrowed  from  the 
other  at  a  comparatively  late  period. 

The  last  of  these  possibilities  must  be  rejected  at  once. 
We  have  shown  above  how  all  these  institutions  of  prim- 
itive Semitic  life,  including  even  circumcision,  grew  nat- 
urally out  of  the  desert  and  oasis  life  such  as  they  were 
subjected  to  in  Arabia.  It  is  purely  arbitrary,  therefore, 
to  assume  without  positive  proof  that  any  one  of  these 
institutions  was  a  late  intruder  into  Semitic  practice.  The 
theory  of  Herodotus  with  reference  to  circumcision  must 
therefore  be  abandoned.  On  the  other  hand,1  few  will  be 
found  to  maintain  that  it  or  any  of  the  other  institutions 
under  discussion  were  borrowed  by  the  Egyptians  from 
the  Semites.  A  people  which  reached  such  a  high  state 
of  culture  at  such  an  early  epoch  is  not  likely  to  have 
borrowed  a  religious  and  social  practice  from  so  rude  a 
people  as  the  Semitic  Arabs  at  a  time  when  the  two  must 
have  been  separated  by  sea  and  desert. 

Of  the  other  two  possibilities,  the  first  is,  under  the 
circumstances,  by  far  the  most  probable.  While,  of  course, 

1  Masp^ro,  ibid.,  pp.  27  and  121,  n.  1. 

»  Book  IV,  172. 

•  Sergi,  Mediterranean  Race,  p.  47. 


118  SEMITIC   ORIGINS 


two  peoples  of  kindred  race  may  in  similar  environments 
have  developed  similar  institutions  independently  of  one 
another,  it  must  be  remembered  that  the  environment  of 
the  Egyptians,  from  the  time  of  their  settlement  in  Egypt, 
was  not  similar  to  that  of  the  Semites,  or  of  a  character  to 
produce  institutions  similar  to  theirs.  Egypt  is  not  a  land 
of  oases,  but  a  river-land  similar  to  Mesopotamia.  It  was 
an  agricultural  country,  rich  and  productive.  As  we  shall 
show  below,  the  civilization  produced  in  such  a  land  was 
not  polyandrous,  and  differed  consequently,  as  to  all  the 
features  which  grow  out  of  polyandry,  from  that  which 
the  desert-oasis  life  produced.  North  Africa,  outside  of 
Egypt,  was  for  the  most  part  a  barren  country,  with  occa- 
sional oases,  in  its  general  features  not  unlike  Arabia.1  It 
is  altogether  probable  that,  as  these  regions  filled  up,  con- 
ditions were  produced  by  the  crowded  populations  similar 
to  those  which  we  have  proven  for  Arabia,2  and  that 
in  consequence  a  similar  culture  of  the  date-palm,3  a 
similar  organization  of  the  clan,  a  similar  worship  for  the 
feminine  productive  principle,  and  in  general,  similar  in- 
stitutions were  in  some  portions  produced,  though  the 
fertile  valleys  in  some  portions  of  North  Africa  probably 

1  For  a  description  of  North  Africa  and  its  oases,  see  The  International 
Geography,  ed.  by  Hugh  Robert  Mill,  London,  1899  ;  for  Morocco,  p.  905  ; 
for  Algeria,  p.  907  ;  for  Tunesia,  pp.  913,  914 ;  for  Tripoli,  p.  916  ff. 

2  Above,  p.  73  ff. 

8  My  friend,  Professor  W.  Max  Muller,  tells  me  that  the  whole  Paradise 
story  of  Genesis,  which,  as  we  have  seen,  reflects  primitive  Semitic  ideas, 
has  a  parallel  in  the  hieroglyphic  Egyptian.  This  indicates  that  what  we 
have  proven  for  the  primitive  Semitic  conceptions  of  religion  which  grew 
out  of  oasis  life,  could  in  like  manner  be  proven  for  the  Hamites.  In 
otfier  words,  the  institutions  which  we  have  proven  in  Arabia  were  born 
earlier  in  North  Africa.  Sayce  (PSBA.,  Vol.  XXII,  p.  278)  describes 
a  vase  taken  from  a  predynastic  tomb,  on  which  a  palm  tree  is  pictured. 
It  is,  therefore,  unnecessary  to  account  for  such  phenomena  in  the  Egyp- 
tian religion  on  the  ground  of  Semitic  influence  from  Arabia.  It  is  in  the 
highest  degree  doubtful  whether  such  foreign  influence,  exercised  apart 
from  conquest  or  settlement,  produced  such  results  anywhere  in  the 
ancient  world.  Semitic  words  in  later  Egyptian  inscriptions  are  no  argu- 
ment against  this  view. 


SEMITIC   RELIGIOUS   ORIGINS  119 

prevented  the  production  of  these  institutions  on  so  wide 
and  so  uniform  a  scale  as  in  Arabia. 

Now  such  crowding  of  the  country  must  have  occurred 
before  the  Semitic  migration,  and  must  have  been  its  cause. 
Some  such  force  must  have  impelled  the  first  immigrants 
to  enter  the  unattractive  Arabian  peninsula.  We  have,* 
then,  in  the  primitive  Hamito-Semitic  home  the  elements  '  '•' 
present  for  the  birth  of  these  institutions  before  the  separa- 1< 
tion^  of  the  two  grand  jiviaiona  of  the  TAT.*.  We  hold  it 
probable,  therefore,  that  the  totemistic  £lan,  the  culture  of 
the  date-palm  with  its  worship,  the  mother  ffoddess  as  the 
typical  divinity,  and  circumcision,  had  to  some  extent  their 
beginnings  at  the  time  when  the  Hamites  and  Semites 
were  living  in  that  common  home  of  their  infancy,  in 
which  their  kindred  tongues  were  born,  notwithstanding 
that  the  differences  in  those  tongues  bear  witness  to  the 
fact  that  they  separated  in  prehistoric  time,  thousands  of 
years  ago. 

If  this  be  so,  we  find,  by  applying  Hilderbrand's  law 
referred  to  above,1  that,  at  the  time  of  the  separation  of 
the  Semites  from  the  Hamites,  the  pastoral  and  semi- 
agricultural  stage  of  life  had  been  reached,  with  some  rude 
cultivation  of  the  date-palm.  This  conclusion  removes 
the  time  of  Hamito-Semitic  savagery  some  thousands  of 
years  farther  back  into  remote  antiquity  than  it  has  usually 
been  placed,  but  it  is  not  on  that  account  to  be  rejected. 
It  must,  it  seems  to  me,  be  regarded  as  highly  probable.2 

The  conclusions  reached  in  this  discussion  inevitably 
lead  to  another,  of  no  little  importance  to  the  correct  un- 
derstanding of  the  Semitic  religions.  If  we  regard  it  as  a 

i  pp.  72,  73. 

a  The  writer  makes  no  pretence  to  a  knowledge  of  Egyptology.  The 
facts  quoted  above  are  quoted  on  the  authority  of  reputable  Egyptologists. 
An  interpretation  has  been  given  them  in  the  text,  such  as  is  compatible 
with  the  results  made  probable  by  the  interpretation  of  the  Semitic 
material  in  the  light  of  economic  and  social  laws.  It  is  to  be  hoped  that 
some  Egyptologist  will  take  the  matter  up  and  do  the  same  for  the 
material  of  his  science. 


120  SEMITIC   ORIGINS 


law,  that  religious  institutions  are  in  some  important 
respects  patterned  on  those  social  and  political  institutions 
which  economic  environment  makes  possible,  we  should 
naturally  expect  the  Semites,  as  they  modified  their  en- 
vironment or  moved  to  new  ones  and  developed  a  system 
of  male  kinship,  to  make  masculine  instead  of  feminine 
deities  the  chief  objects  of  their  worship. 

The  feminine  deities  thus  displaced  were  the  earliest 
principal  deities  which  the  Semites  had,  for  even  in  their 
savage  state,  their  monogamy  was  too  temporary  to  permit 
of  a  system  of  male  kinship.  We  regard  it,  therefore,  as 
^general  prmciple  whichjnay  be  safely  applied,  that  those 
phases  of  Semitic  religion  which  reflect  a  polyandrous 
state  of  society  are  more  primitive  than  any  of  those 
which  reflect  a  patriarchal.  The  latter  are  either  of  later 


,     .  *     birth,  are  borrowed  from  foreign  peoples,  or  are  formed 
^          a  mother  goddess,  by  changing  her  gender  but  retain- 


ing many  of  her  attributes.  As  society,  in  consequence 
of  changed  environment,  was  transformed  from  the  matri- 
archal to  the  patriarchal  form,  such  transformations  of 
deities  actually  occurred,  as  will  be  shown  in  the  next  two 

(chapters.  Here  and  there  the  old  mother  goddess  survived 
in  something  of  her  pristine  independence,  preserved  by 
the  forces  of  religious  conservatism.  Where  transforma- 
tions into  a  masculine  deity  occurred  she  was  often  in  part 
retained  as  the  consort  and  companion  of  the  male  deity. 

Thus  by  classifying  the  deities  on  this  principle  and 
following  out  the  lines  of  economical  and  social  develop- 
ment, much  light  will  be  thrown  upon  the  problems  of 
Semitic  religion,  and  gods  which  have  been  considered  to 
be  borrowed  by  one  Semitic  nation  from  another  will 
frequently  appear  to  be  independent  developments  from 
a  common  mother  goddess  of  the  primitive  time.1 


ll 


I1  It  does  not  fall  within  the  scope  of  this  investigation  to  account  for 
the  origin  of  the  idea  of  a  god  or  of  supernatural  spirits  among  the  primi- 
tive Semites.  Jtjs_prqbable,  however^ that _among  them  religion  did  not 
originate  in  ancestor  worship.  Cf.  Frey's  Tod  SrcJf.nglaiibe  und  Seden- 


SEMITIC   RELIGIOUS  ORIGINS  121 

kult  in  alien  Israel,  and  Gruneisen's  Der  Ahnencultus  und  die  Urreligion 
Israels.  For  arguments  on  the  other  side,  cf.  Stade  Geschichte,  Vol.  I, 
pp.  387-427  ;  Schwally,  Leben  nach  dem  Tode,  ch.  I ;  Charles,  Escha- 
tology,  p.  20  ft,  and  G.  A.  Smith,  Preaching  of  the  Old  Testament, 
p.  184,  n.  2. 


CHRONOLOGICAL  TABLE 


SOUTH  SEMITIC  CHRONOLOGY 

Minsean    kingdom,    cir.    1250-600 

B.C. 

Sabsean  kingdom,  cir.  750-115  B.C. 
Kingdom  of  Saba  and  Raidan,  115 

B.C.  to  cir.  350  A.D.  (south  Arabia 

and  Abyssinia). 
Kingdom  of  Aksum,  cir.  350  A.D. 

onward  (Abyssinia). 
Mohammed  born,  571  A.D. 
Mohammed  began  preaching,  610 

A.D. 

Mohammed  left  Mecca,  622  A.D. 
Mohammed's  death,  632  A.D. 
Medina  Caliphate,  632-661  A.D. 


WEST  SEMITIC  CHRONOLOGY 

El-Amarna  Tablets,  cir.  1400  B.C. 
(Tyre,  Sidon,  Gebal,  Jerusalem, 
Lacish,  and  Ashtoreth  then  flour- 
ished). 

Kingdom  of  Tyre,  cir.  1300-332  B.C. 
(Hiram,  king,  cir.  1000;  Eth- 
Baal,  cir.  880  ;  Baali,  cir.  660). 

Israel  invaded  Canaan,  cir.  1200 
B.C. 

Yakhwemelek,  king  of  Gebal,  cir. 
400  B.C. 

Eshmunazer,  Tabnith,  and  Esh- 
munazer  II,  kings  of  Sidon,  cir. 
380-332  B.C. 

Greek  rule  of  Phoenicia,  332  B.C. 
onward. 

Phoenician  kings  of  Citium  and 
Idalion  in  Cyprus,  479-312  B.C. 

Grseco-Egyptian  kings  rule  in  Cy- 
prus, 312  B.C.  onward. 

Carthage  founded,  cir.  825  B.C. 

Carthage  subject  to  Rome,  201  B.C. 


122 


CHAPTER   IV 

TRANSFORMATIONS   AMONG  THE  SOUTHERN  AND 
WESTERN   SEMITES 

WE  have  traced  above l  the  general  lines  of  social  devel- 
opment in  Arabia  and  have  noted  how  the  vague  polyandry 
of  the  Nair  type  and  descent  through  the  mother  were, 
through  economic  causes,  and  possibly  the  influence  of  war 
and  marriage  by  capture,  transformed  into  baal  marriage 
and  descent  through  the  father  ;  polyandry  of  the  Thibetan 
type  forming  in  certain  localities  an  intermediate  stage  of 
social  development.  Robertson  Smith  is  no  doubt  right 
in  holding  that  this  transformation  did  not  take  place 
before  the  Semitic  dispersion.2  Much  evidence  will  be 
presented  in  Chapter  VI  in  support  of  this  view.  The 
transformation  had,  however,  taken  place  by  the  time  of 
Mohammed,  who  provided  that  wives  whom  their  husbands 
could  not  trust  might  be  rebuked,  secluded  in  lonely  apart- 
ments, and  even  flogged  by  the  husband.3  Of  course,  in 
parts  of  Arabia  the  older  liberties  of  women  may  have 
been  retained  much  longer  than  they  were  at  Mecca  and 
Medina,  but  the  trend  of  social  development,  as  the  pas- 
sage quoted  above*  from  Strabo  indicates,  had  been  for 
some  time  in  the  direction  of  the  patriarchal  family.  It 
must  have  been  well  advanced  in  Mecca  and  Medina 
before  the  prophet  could  make  such  a  law  as  that 
referred  to. 

This  transformation  of  the  family  and  the  exaltation  of 
the  father  left  its  impress  upon  the  Arabic  conception  of 

1  Chapter  IL  *  Kinship,  p.  179.  8  Qwr'an,  4». 

*  p.  64.    See  Strabo,  Bk.  XVI,  p.  783. 
123 


124  SEMITIC  ORIGINS 


divinity.  In  South  Arabia,  the  old  mother  goddess,  even 
while  she  retained  her  feminine  name,  became  a  mas- 
culine deity  and  a  father  god.1  He  is  frequently  desig- 
nated as  lord  (baal)  Athtar,  and  is  at  least  once  called 
"father."2 

In  Yemen,  in  the  southwestern  corner  of  Arabia,  this 
impress  can  be  most  clearly  traced.  The  country  is  of 
volcanic  formation,  consisting  of  extensive  uplands,  broken 
by  mountain  ranges  and  interspersed  with  valleys  of  sur- 
passing richness,  where  from  time  immemorial  the  land 
has  been  laid  out  in  terraces,  the  water  of  the  rainy  season 
stored  in  cisterns  for  irrigation,  and  many  natural  rivulets 
course  down  the  hills.3  These  valleys  produce  wheat, 
barley,  maize,  millet,  and  coffee,  as  well  as  palm  trees, 
orange,  lemon,  quince,  mango,  plum,  apricot,  peach,  apple, 
pomegranate,  and  fig  trees.  The  vine  also  grows  there 
luxuriantly.4  This  is  the  Arabia  Felix  of  the  ancients. 
Here  a  Semitic  kingdom  had  been  established,  probably  as 
early  as  1250  years  before  the  Christian  era,  and  perhaps 
earlier.  The  claims  of  Glaser  and  Hommel  that  a  Minsean 
kingdom  preceded  the  Sabsean  on  this  soil  seem  to  me 
to  be  well  made  out.  The  Minsean  sarcophagus  of  the 
Ptolemaic  period,  discovered  some  years  since  in  Egypt,* 
is  no  objection  to  this ;  it  only  shows  that  the  city  of  Ma'in 
kept  its  identity  some  time  after  it  was  dominated  by  the 
Sabsean  power.  Tradition  has  it  that  a  queen  of  Sabsea 
visited  Solomon,6  and  Sargon,  king  of  Assyria,  counted 
It'amara  ( Jetha'-amara),  king  of  Saba3a,  among  his  tribute- 

1  Cf.  Hebraica,  Vol.  X,  pp.  52-59  and  202-205. 

2Mordtmann's  Himjarische  Inschriften  und  Alterhumer-Mittheilnngen 
kgl.  Museen  zu  Berlin,  Heft  VII,  No.  862. 

8  Cf.  Reclus,  The  Earth  and  its  Inhabitants,  New  York,  1885,  Vol.  IV, 
p.  438  ff.,  and  Zwemer,  Arabia,  the  Cradle  of  Islam,  chs.  v  and  vi. 

*  Zwemer,  op.  cit.,  p.  57. 

6  Cf.  Golenischeff,  in  the  St.  Petersburg  Sapiski,  1893,  p.  219  ff. ;  T>.  H. 
Miiller,  in  Wiener's  Zeitschrift  f.  d.  Kunde  des  Morganlandes,  1894,  p.  1  ff. ; 
Hommel,  PSBA.,  Vol.  XVI,  145  ff. ;  Derenbourg,  in  Jour,  asiatique,  1894  ; 
and  Weber,  Mitteilungen  vorderasiat.  Qesellschaft,  1901,  Heft  I,  p.  42. 

«  1  Kgs.  101  ff. 


TRANSFORMATIONS  125 


payers  in  the  year  715  B.C.,1  but  it  seems  probable  that 
these  references  are  to  a  North  Arabian  precursor  of  the 
Sabaean  kingdom.2  In  the  rich  valleys  of  southwestern 
Arabia,  agricultural  communities  must  have  been  formed 
at  a  very  early  time.  Semitic  social  life  would  therefore 
be  transformed  here  far  sooner  than  in  other  parts  of 
Arabia.  Reclus  declares  3  that  in  this  mountainous  region 
the  very  soil  and  climate  render  a  nomadic  life  almost  im- 
possible. There  are  vast  uplands  between  the  mountains 
and  valleys  where  the  Bedawi  have  settled  into  a  pastoral 
life.4  To  this  region  the  Semites  from  central  Arabia 
came,  here  their  social  structure  underwent  in  course  of 
time,  and  in  consequence  of  their  new  conditions,  a  trans- 
formation. Descent  was  reckoned  through  the  father,  and 
in  time  the  old  mother  goddess  was  transformed  into  a 
god.  He  became,  of  course,  a  father,  and  is  frequently 
called  lord  (IbdaT)  Athtar. 

Not  only  is  this  true,  but  we  are  able  in  one  inscription 
to  catch  a  glimpse  of  the  deity  in  the  very  process  of  trans- 
formation. This  interesting  document  was  published  some 
years  since  by  the  Derenbourgs,6  and  is  of  sufficient  im- 
portance to  be  reproduced  here.  It  reads :  — 

1.  Yasbakh  of  Riyam,  son  of  Mauqis  and  Baus,  and  his  wife  Karibat 

of  M.  .  .  . 

2.  of  the  tribe  Sirwakh,  a  royal  vassal,  —  they  have  consecrated  to 

their  lady  'Umm-Athtar  for 

3.  four  sons  four  images  of  pure  gold,  because  'Umm-Athtar  blessed 

4.  them  with  the  boys  and  three  daughters  and  they  lived  —  all  these 

chil- 

5.  dren  —  and  they  two  themselves  have  acquired  gain  through  these 

children.     May  'Umm- 

6.  Athtar  continue  to  bless  his  servants,  Yasbakh  and  Karibat  with 

well-formed  children,  and  to  favor  them 

1  Cf.  KB.,  Vol.  II,  pp.  54,  55;  and  Glaser,  Die  Abcssinier  in  Arabia 
und  Afrika,  p.  29. 

8  Cf.  "Weber,  in  Mitteil.  der  vorderasiat.  Gesell.,  1901,  I,  32. 

»  Op.  crt.,  p.  438. 

4  Zwemer,  op.  ci£.,  p.  68. 

•  Journal  asiatique,  8  Ser.,  Vol.  II,  pp.  256-266. 


126  SEMITIC  ORIGINS 


7.  themselves,  and  to  favor  their  children.     May  'Umra-Athtar  be 

gracious 

8.  and  grant  complete  safety  to  the  sons  of  Yasbakh,  Kharif  Mag- 

da'al,  Ra- 

9.  balat  and  'Am'atiq,  the  descendants  of  Mauqis,  and  to  their  har- 

vests and  good  fruits  in 

10.   the  land  Nakhla  Kharif,  and  in  the  pastures  of  their  camels.     To 
'Umm-Athtar. 

The  value  of  this  inscription  to  our  subject  can  scarcely 
be  overrated.  'Umm-Athtar  is  not  a  new  female  divinity 
as  the  Derenbourgs  thought,1  but  is  as  Mordtmann  has 
rightly  seen,  simply  "  mother  Athtar."  2  'Umm-Athtar  is 
also  in  1.  2  called  "lady."3 

It  is  therefore  clear  that  she  is,  in  the  thought  of  these 
worshippers,  still  a  goddess.  No  doubt,  therefore,  it  was 
an  Athtar  thus  conceived  who  was  invoked  in  such  proper 
names  as  Yasma'um,  meaning  "may  mother  hear."4 
Although  the  parents,  who  caused  the  inscription  under 
discussion  to  be  written,  addressed  Athtar  as  "  lady  "  and 
as  "mother,"  they  nevertheless  describe  themselves  as 
"  his  servants,"  5  showing  that  they  were  conscious  that  at 
times,  or  possibly  that  in  neighboring  places,  the  deity 
was  regarded  as  a  god,  and  that  the  transition  was  be- 
ginning to  make  itself  felt  in  their  own  thought.  At  the 
same  time  the  character  of  the  old  mother  goddess,  or 
deity  of  sexual  love  and  fertility,  was  still  strictly  main- 
tained ;  they  give  thanks  for  the  birth  of  their  seven  chil- 
dren, and  while  they  pray  for  more  they  pray  also  for 
their  harvests  and  pasture  lands,  over  which  the  same 
goddess  has  power.  It  is  also  an  interesting  fact  that  the 
name  of  the  place  where  this  "mother  Athtar,"  who  is 
called  "he,"  was  worshipped  was  Nakhla  Kharif,  which 


1  Op.  cit.,  p.  259. 

2  Himjarische  Inschriften,  p.  26. 
8  Sabsean,  nxitt. 

4  Sabsean,  DK»!DD\     Cf.  Journal  asiatique,  6  Ser.,  Vol.  XIX,  p.  213, 
No.  4171. 
6  Sabsean, 


TRANSFORMATIONS  127 

means  "  the  palm  tree  of  ripe  fruit,"  —  a  fact  which  con- 
nects this  deity  with  the  date-palm,  as  we  have  done  in 
the  preceding  chapter. 

The  evidence  that  Athtar  in  Sabsea  was  transformed 
into  a  god  is  abundant.  He  is  called  ba'al  or  "  lord  "  in  a 
considerable  number  of  inscriptions  which  come  from  sev- 
eral different  localities,1  and  is  at  least  once,  as  already 
noted,  called  "father."  Robertson  Smith  was  of  the 
opinion  that  the  term  baal  originated  in  Syria  and  was 
borrowed  by  the  Yemenites  from  thence.2  If  this  be  true, 
the  application  of  the  term  ba'al  to  Athtar  would  be 
decidedly  late.  Smith's  argument  is,  however,  based  on 
the  supposition  that  all  agricultural  processes  were  bor- 
rowed from  Syria,  even  to  the  cultivation  of  the  date-palm, 
—  an  opinion  which  our  investigation  has  proven  3  to  be, 
in  part  at  least,  untenable.  The  primitive  Semitic  social! . 
and  religious  institutions  presuppose  the  culture  of  the  W 
date-palm  and  a  semi-agricultural  life.  The  course  of  ' 
development  which  Semitic  social  life  underwent,  how- 
ever, assures  us  that  the  ba'al  form  of  marriage  made  its 
appearance  at  a  comparatively  late  time,  and  that  therefore 
the  ba'al  conception  of  deity  is  likewise  late  whether  it 
was  borrowed  by  the  Yemenites  from  Syria  or  not.  We 
are  safe,  then,  in  assuming  that  the  ba'al  Athtar  is  later 
than  the  'umm  Athtar  and  was  developed  out  of  her. 

This  masculine  Athtar  was  in  places  called  "  lord  of  the 
water  supply,"  *  and  like  the  feminine  Athtar  described 
above,  was  a  god  of  fertility,  whose  blessing  was  necessary 
to  abundant  harvests.6  That  Athtar  became  localized  in 
different  places  in  each  of  which  slightly  different  con- 
ceptions of  him  were  entertained,  so  that  there  were 

1  See  CIS.,  Pi.  IV,  Vol.  I,  Nos.  40*,  41*,  46s  ;  Mordtmann,  op.  cit.,  No. 
8862,  and  ZDMG.,  Vol.  XXXVII,  pp.  4  and  326. 
3  Religion  of  the  Semites,  2d  ed.,  p.  107  ff. 
8  See  p.  75,  n.  4. 

«  Cf.  CIS.,  Ft.  IV,  Vol.  I,  No.  41,  and  Fell,  ZDMG.,  Vol.  LIV,  p.  245. 
6  CIS.,  Pt.  IV,  Vol.  I,  Nos.  104  and  106. 


128  SEMITIC   ORIGINS 


different  gods  of  this  name  just  as  there  were  different 
Ishtars  in  Assyria  and  different  Virgin  Marys  in  modern 
Europe,  I  have  shown  elsewhere.1 

It  frequently  happens  in  such  cases  that  some  favorite 
epithet  of  the  deity  is  used  so  constantly  to  designate  him 
that  it  finally  displaces  his  original  name:  thus  Tammuz 
(or  whatever  the  primitive  name  was)  became  Adon,  as 
did  Yah  we  in  Israel.  Fell  has  shown  2  how  frequently  the 
Sabseans  attached  epithets  to  their  gods,  but  his  investi- 
gation of  the  subject  is  not  sufficiently  thoroughgoing. 
He  stops  at  what  are  still  epithets  only,  and  does  not  at- 
tempt to  distinguish  those  divine  names  which  originated 
as  epithets.  It  is  possible  to  show  how  several  divine 
names  in  Arabia  originated  in  this  way.  At  'Amran  the 
epithet  Ilmaqqahu,  "the  divine  protector,"  very  nearly 
displaced  the  older  name  of  Athtar.3  In  thirty  inscrip- 
tions, Ilmaqqahu  has  displaced  the  name  Athtar  except  in 
two  instances,*  and  in  the  former  of  these  6  the  meaning 
of  the  inscription  equates  Ilmaqqahu  with  Athtar.  Ilmaq- 
qahu is,  moreover,  throughout  this  group  of  inscriptions,  a 
protector  of  children  and  a  giver  of  fertility,  —  functions 
not  only  performed  by  Athtar  elsewhere,  as  we  have  seen, 
but  also  performed  by  Athtar  in  this  very  town,  as  one  of 
the  inscriptions  from  which  the  epithet  Ilmaqqahu  is 
omitted  proves.6  This  epithet  was  known  elsewhere,  e.g. 
at  San'a,7  but  at  'Amran  it  nearly  displaced  every  other 
name  of  Athtar.  At  times,  as  in  some  of  the  inscriptions 
published  by  Mordtmann,8  the  personification  of  the  epi- 
thet goes  so  far  that  Athtar  and  Ilmaqqahu  are  put  side 
by  side  as  separate  gods.  Thus  the  evolution  of  a  new 
deity  from  an  old,  by  the  use  of  an  epithet,  was  completed. 

From  this  phenomenon  it  is  safe  to  infer  that  if  other 
South  Arabian,  or  indeed  Semitic,  gods  appear,  whose 

1  Hebraica,  Vol.  X,  pp.  67,  203,  204.  *  Nos.  74  and  102. 

a  ZDMG.,  Vol.  LIV,  p.  238  ff.  6  No.  74. 

8  See  CIS.,  Pt.  IV,  Vol.  I,  Nos.  72-102.  8  No.  102. 

7  Cf.  CIS.,  Pt.  IV,  Vol.  I,  No.  1&        8  ZDMG.,  Vol.  LII,  pp.  394-400. 


TRANSFORMATIONS  129 


names  are  epithets,  and  whose  characteristics  and  functions 
are  clearly  those  of  Athtar,  that  they  are  offshoots  from 
him  and  have  arisen  in  a  similar  manner.  Another 
instance  of  this  may  be  seen  in  the  god  Talab  Riyam, 
"  The  Strong  One  of  Riyam,"  1  (analogous  to  the  "  Mighty 
One  of  Jacob  "  2  as  a  name  for  Yahwe).  The  South  Arabic 
epithet  has,  however,  gone  so  far  that  the  combination  of 
the  name  of  the  locality  with  the  adjective  is  complete,  and 
the  two  have  so  fully  displaced  the  name  of  Athtar  that 
in  one  instance  3  Athtar  is  enumerated  in  the  same  sen- 
tence as  a  separate  deity.  That  the  two  were  originally 
one  appears  from  the  fact  that  they  both  have  the  same 
functions  of  fertility.4 

Thus  Yemen  developed  many  masculine  deities,  —  how 
many,  we  do  not  yet  know,  and  probably  shall  not  when 
all  the  inscriptions  which  South  Arabia  can  yield  are  found 
and  read,  for  many  of  them  no  doubt  passed  away  without 
leaving  any  monument  behind  to  commemorate  them. 

The  old  mother,  goddess  was-HoU  however,  lost  in  con-i 
sequence  of  this  transformation.     She  was  retained  as  thej 
consort  of  the  male  deity  ;  or  to  speak  more  accurately,] 
she  was  divided  into  two  deities,  a  masculine  and  a  fem- 
inine.    This  masculine  deity  was  identified  in  the  age  from 
which  our  inscriptions  come  with  the  morning  star,  and 
was  often  known  as  "  Athtar  Sharqan,"  6  while  the  fem- 
inine deity  was  identified  with  the  sun,  and  called  "  Shams." 
That  Shams  should  be  a  goddess  in  South  Arabia  while 
Shamash  was  elsewhere  a  god,  was  due,  perhaps,  as  we 
shall  see,  to  the  absence  of  foreign  influences ;  but  whatever 
its  explanation,  it  is  a  fact.     The  expression  "  to  the  god- 
dess Shams,  the  Lady  "  (baalaf)  occurs  in  one  inscription,6 

1  Mordtmann,  Himjarische  Inschriflen,  etc.,  Nos.  825,  826,  830,  860, 
866,  875,  and  879. 

*  Isa.  49*>  and  60*5.  8  No.  866.  *  Cf .  No.  82527-». 

6  Cf.  Hebraica,  Vol.  X,  p.  204.  Fell,  however,  thinks  that  Sebaean 
analogies  would  lead  us  to  regard  Sharqan  as  a  place.  See  ZDMG.,  Vol. 
LIV,  pp.  241,  242. 

8  Mordtmann  and  Muller's  Sabaischr,  Denkmalern,  No.  13. 


130  SEMITIC   ORIGINS 


while  the  term  baalat  is  applied  to  her  in  others.1  She  is 
therefore  clearly  feminine.  She  was  further  thought  to 
be  the  spouse  of  the  masculine  god  of  fertility,  and  they 
together  were  thought  to  be  the  parents  of  their  worsl^ip- 
pers.  Thus  one  inscription,  published  by  Mordtmann, 
read  in  its  original  form,  as  he  has  pointed  out,  "  with  Talab 
Riyam  and  with  Shams,  their  parents,  are  the  sons  of 
Qirn."  2  Here  Shams  is  undoubtedly  the  spouse  of  a  deity 
which,  as  we  have  seen,  sprung  from  Athtar.  This  pas- 
sage makes  it  clear  that  when  "Athtar  Sharqan  and 
Shams"  are  coupled  together  in  another  inscription,  as 
objects  of  devotion,3  they  were  worshipped  as  the  union 
of  male  and  female  in  the  divine  circle,  analogous  to  the 
union  of  husband  and  wife  in  the  patriarchal  home,  which 
had  become  the  basis  of  Arabian  society. 

The  material  upon  which  these  observations  are  founded 
comes  from  the  Sabtean  and  later  periods.  The  same  was 
probably  also  true  of  the  religion  of  the  earlier  Minsean 
kingdom.  At  least  that  is  the  conclusion  forced  upon  me 
by  an  examination  of  the  material  accessible  to  me.  The 
Minsean  kingdom  was  composed  of  a  number  of  tribes, 
each  of  which  had  its  local  deity.  In  what  is  probably  one 
of  the  earliest  Minaean  inscriptions,4  coming  from  Waqhail, 
the  second  king  of  Ma'in  whose  name  is  recovered,6  three 
deities  are  mentioned,  —  Athtar  of  Qabd,  Wadd,  and  Nak- 
rakh.  That  this  Athtar  was  not  originally  a  member  of  the 
Pantheon  of  the  city  of  Ma'in  seems  certain,  from  the 

1  E.g.  in  Mordtmann's  Himjarische  Inschriften,  No.  880. 

2  Op.  cit.,  No.  869. 

8  CIS.,  Pt.  IV,  Vol.  I,  No.  74.  There  are  two  or  three  interesting  pas- 
sages in  which  Shams  is  associated  with  a  masculine  form  of  Athtar  (in 
two  cases  it  is  Ilmaqqahu)  and  is  called  "his  Shams."  See  CIS.,  Nos. 
106;  143  and  149.  Winckler  has  endeavored  to  show  (ZDMG.,  Vol. 
LIV,  pp.  408-420)  that  Shams  also  meant  "goddess"  at  times,  as 
Ishtar  did  among  the  Assyrians.  Even  if  this  be  so,  it,  like  Ishtar,  also 
designated  a  definite  goddess. 

4  Hale"vy,  No.  255  (Journal  asiatique,  1872). 

6  Cf.  Weber,  in  Mitteilungen  der  vorderasiat.  Gesell.,  1901,  Heft  I, 
p.  69,  and  Mordtmann,  ZDMG.,  Vol.  XLVII,  pp.  395-417. 


TRANSFORMATIONS  131 


fact  that  she  (or  he)  is  connected  with  another  place,  and 
also  from  the  fact  that  a  king  who  reigned  three  or  four 
steps  down  the  list  mentions  only  Wadd  and  Muradawahi 
as  the  deities  of  Ma'in.1  In  the  inscriptions  of  other  kings 
a  number  of  Athtars  of  other  places  are  included  ;  it  is 
natural  to  conclude,  therefore,  that  at  Ma'in  the  native 
deities  were  Wadd  and  a  feminine  deity  called  by  various 
epithets.  That  the  primitive  Semitic  order  of  society  and 
of  thought  had  largely  passed  away  is  shown  by  the 
presence  of  the  baal  idea  in  these  inscriptions.2 

The  name  Wadd  is  an  epithet  formed  from  a  root  mean- 
ing "  love,"  and  there  can  be  no  doubt  that  Wadd  is  but 
another  name  for  a  masculinized  Athtar,  or  for  an  Arabian 
Tammuz.  Another  Minzean  inscription  makes  him  the 
consort  of  the  old  mother  goddess  under  the  name  of 
Athirat,8  a  name  derived  from  the  posts  which  marked  the 
old  Semitic  sanctuary.  There  can  be  little  doubt,  there- 
fore, that  the  transformation  which  we  trace  elsewhere  in 
later  inscriptions,  had  taken  place  at  Ma'in  by  the  begin- 
ning of  the  period  of  the  Minsean  kingdom. 

If  now  we  pass  to  North  Arabia  and  assume  that  the 
same  laws  of  religious  development  were  at  work  there,  it 
will  appear  that  a  number  of  deities  were  evolved  by  the 
same  social  forces  out  of  the  transformed  mother  goddess, 
and  that  Allah  himself,  the  one  true  God  of  Mohammed- 
anism, was  originally  one  of  these  gods.  That  Mohammed 
introduced  a  large  spiritual  element  into  the  Islamic  con- 
ception of  Allah  cannot  be  denied.  The  strong  assertion 
of  the  unity  of  God,  his  eternity  and  aloneness,  made,  for 
example,  in  Sura  112,  distinctly  and  immeasurably  exalted 
the  Arabian  conception  of  divinity.  Mohammed's  earnest 
effort  to  make  the  association  of  any  other  divinity  with 
Allah  impossible  *  dealt  a  death  blow  to  the  old  heathenism. 

i  Halevy,  No.  229. 

8  Cf.  the  proper  name  "Ba'alat,"  in  HaleVy,  No.  234. 
8  Cf.    Hommel,   Expository    Times,   Vol.    XI,   p.    190,  and   Aufsdtze 
und  Abhandlungen,  Vol.  II,  p.  206  ff.  ;  also  below,  Chapter  VI. 
*  See,  e.g.,  Suras  4  and  53,  passim. 


132  SEMITIC  ORIGINS 


No  one  who  reads  the  Qur'an  can  doubt  that  for  much  of 
the  purity  and  loftiness  of  this  monotheism  Mohammed 
was  indebted  to  Judaism  and  Christianity.1  It  is  also 
clear  that  the  pure  monotheism  of  the  early  years  of  his 
ministry  was  not  attractive  to  his  fellow  countrymen,  and 
that  in  the  later  years  of  his  career  several  concessions 
were  made  to  the  older  Arabian  religious  ideas.  Thus 
after  his  migration  to  Medina  the  qibla,  or  direction  of  the 
face  in  prayer,  was  changed  from  Jerusalem  to  Mecca.2 
In  consequence,  the  Qa'aba  became  for  the  Mohammedan 
the  sanctuary  of  Allah,  so  that  Mohammed  could  subse- 
quently call  it  "the  holy  house,"  "the  holy  sanctuary."8 
He  also  provided  that  if,  while  on  a  pilgrimage  to  Mecca, 
one  killed  game,  —  an  act  which  violated  an  old  taboo,4  — 
a  sacrifice  of  atonement  for  it  must  be  offered  to  Allah  in 
the  Qa'aba.5  The  one  God,  Allah,  was  thus  identified 
with  the  god  of  the  Qa'aba,  and  it  became  his  sanctuary, 
which  it  has  remained  to  the  present  time.  One  of  the 
evidences  of  borrowing  is  that,  though  Mohammedanism 
knows  no  necessity  of  atonement,  yet  a  part  of  the  ritual 
to  which  every  pilgrim  to  Mecca  must  conform  is  the 
offering  of  a  sacrifice.6  This  is  a  camel,  bullock,  goat,  or 
sheep,  according  to  the  wealth  of  the  pilgrim.  Such  a 
custom  is  clearly  a  survival  from  heathen  ritual. 

This  identification  of  Allah  with  the  god  of  the  Qa'aba 
could,  however,  not  have  been  made  had  not  a  god  been  pre- 
viously worshipped  at  the  Qa'aba  who  could  be  thus  fused 
with  Mohammed's  Allah  without  doing  serious  violence  to 
religious  feeling.  It  has  been  frequently  pointed  out  that 

1  Cf.  Geiger's  Was  hat  Mohammed  aus  dem  Judenthum  aufgenommen  ? 
1833,  and  The  Bible  and  Islam,  by  Henry  Preserved  Smith,  New  York, 
1897. 

2  Sura  2"o. 
8  Sura  52- 8. 

4  Robertson  Smith's  Religion  of  the  Semites,  2d  ed.,  p.  112  ft.,  and 
144  ff. 

5  Sura  598-98. 

6  Cf.  Zwemer's  Arabia,  the  Cradle  of  Islam,  1900,  p.  39. 


TRANSFORMATIONS  133 

the  goddess  Al-Uzza  was  especially  connected  with  the 
sanctuary  at  Mecca.1  It  is  clear,  however,  from  one  of 
Mohammed's  Meccan  Suras  which  dates  from  the  earlier 
years  of  his  ministry  (5319  ff>),  that  the  popular  mythology 
made  Al-Uzza,  Al-Lat,  and  Manat  daughters  of  a  male 
deity  which,  even  at  this  early  period,  Mohammed  identi- 
fied with  Allah.  This  is  not  surprising,  for  what  is  more 
natural  than  that  Mohammed  should  believe  that  the  god 
of  his  childhood's  tribal  faith  was  after  all  one  with  the 
God  of  his  larger  thought  and  prophetic  ministry  ?  That 
a  goddess  should  be  at  Mecca  the  daughter  of  a  god  is  the 
reverse  of  the  conception  which  prevailed  among  the  primi- 
tive Semites,  and  which  was  preserved  among  the  Naba- 
thaeans,  where  Al-Lat  was  regarded  as  the  mother  of 
Dhu-'l-Shara.2  These  facts  and  the  course  of  development 
in  the  conception  of  deity  which  we  have  traced  in  south 
Arabia  lead  us  to  suggest  the  following  as  the  probable 
history  of  the  conception  of  deity  at  Mecca.  The  shrine 
with  its  sacred  spring,  the  Zemzem,  was  originally  the 
shrine  of  the  mother  goddess,  Athtar.  By  processes  iden- 
tical with  those  which  operated  in  Yemen  she  was  divided 
into  a  masculine  and  a  feminine  deity,  or  by  influences 
similar  to  those  which  appear  in  the  Gilgamish  epic  in 
Babylonia,  Tammuz  had  become  her  husband.  This  is  not 
a  mere  conjecture,  since  the  memory  of  this  masculine  and 
feminine  pair  under  the  names  Isaf  and  Naila  has  actually 
been  preserved  in  Mohammedan  tradition.3  To  this  femi- 
nine deity  different  epithets  were  applied.  "Whether  these 
epithets  grew  out  of  the  thought  of  the  Meccans  them- 
selves, or  were  in  part  the  result  of  syncretism  with  other 
Arabic  tribes,  we  cannot  now  determine.  These  epithets 
became  so  fixed  that  in  time  they  were  regarded  as  the 

xCf.  Robertson  Smith's  Kinship,  p.  294,  Wellhausen's  Heidentum 
2d  ed.,  p.  36  ft.,  and  Hebraica,  Vol.  X,  p.  64  ft. 

2  See  Smith,  Kinship,  p.  292 ;  and  Religion  of  the  Semites,  p.  56  ft.;  and 
Hebraica,  Vol.  X,  p.  64  ;  and  below,  Chapter  VI. 

8Cf.  Wellhausen,  Heidentum,  2d  ed.,  p.  77. 


134  SEMITIC  ORIGINS 


names  of  different  goddesses.  In  course  of  time  the  male 
phase  of  the  Athtar  at  Mecca  so  overshadowed  the  female, 
just  as  the  patriarchate  had  in  human  society  overshadowed 
the  matriarchate,  that  the  feminine  deity,  the  mother,  was 
to  such  a  degree  subordinated  that  the  male  could  be 
called  Al-lahu,  or  "the  god."  This  god  was  also  known 
as  Hubal,  and  there  was  an  idol  of  him  in  the  Qa'aba. 
Wellhausen  has  anticipated  me  in  identifying  him  with 
Allah.1  For  a  long  time  one  of  the  epithets  applied  to  the 
old  mother  goddess  was  thought  to  be  the  name  of  Hubal's 
spouse,  while  others  were  thought  to  be  the  names  of  their 
daughters.  By  the  time  of  the  prophet,  however,  if  we 
may  judge  by  the  one  allusion  made  to  it,  Allah  and  his 
daughters  were  thought  by  the  Meccans  to  constitute  their 
pantheon. 

At  this  juncture  Mohammed  appeared  and  endeavored 
to  exalt  and  purify  the  conception  of  Allah  possessed  by 
his  countrymen.  Finding  himself  after  years  of  preaching 
unable  to  banish  the  old  heathenism,  he  compromised, — 
banishing  the  goddesses  who  still  were  the  patrons  of  social 
impurity,  and  persuading  the  people  to  regard  them  as 
mere  names,  —  he  led  them  to  identify  the  god  of  the 
Qa'aba  with  the  one  God  of  the  universe.  Thus  the  God 
of  Islam  was  engrafted  onto  a  natural  stock,  which  had  its 
root  in  the  primitive  Semitic  mother  goddess. 

No  doubt  the  few  gods  of  Arabic  heathenism  which  are 
known  to  us  through  Mohammedan  sources  originated,  at 
least  most  of  them,  in  the  same  way.  Their  names  are  epi- 
thets, as  Dhu-'l-Khalasa,  Al-Fals,  Al-Galsad,  Al-Uqaisir, 
etc.2  They  were  each  connected  with  some  idol  which 

1  Op.  cit.,  pp.  75,  76.    Among  the  customs  which  Mohammedanism  in- 
herited from  this  old  cult  is  that  which  requires  the  pilgrim  to  make  a  cir- 
cuit seven  times  around  the  Qa'aba.     He  must  lay  aside  his  own  clothes 
and  put  on  two  pieces  of  cloth,  one  around  the  loins  and  the  other  over 
the  back,  but  in  the  more  shameless  days  of  heathenism  it  was  done  with- 
out any  clothing  whatever.     Cf .  Zwemer's  Arabia,  the  Cradle  of  Islam, 
p.  38. 

2  Cf.  Wellhausen's  Heidentum,  2d  ed.,  pp.  45-64. 


TRANSFORMATIONS  135 

was  often  a  natural  crag  or  stone.  The  details  of  their 
history  are  unknown  to  us,  but  if  we  could  ascertain  them 
we  should  no  doubt  find  that  these  gods  were  developed 
out  of  the  primitive  Semitic  mother  goddess  by  the  same 
laws  of  progress  and  differentiation,  the  action  of  whicli 
we  have  already  traced. 

Passing  now  to  Abyssinia,  we  find  the  worship  of  the 
same  deity,  known  here  as  Astar,  the  form  which  the  name 
of  the  primitive  mother  goddess  assumed  in  Ethiopic. 
The  worship  of  Astar  is  vouched  for  in  an  inscription  from 
Aksum,  fragmentary  copies  of  which  were  brought  to 
Europe  as  long  ago  as  1833,  and  of  which  other  fragments 
have  been  secured  at  various  times  since.  Bent  in  1892 
secured  an  almost  perfect  copy.  The  inscription  was 
written  a  little  later  than  400  A.D.1  There  is  also  much 
in  Abyssinia  besides  the  name  to  connect  this  deity  with 
the  Athtar  of  south  Arabia.  At  the  site  of  the  city  of 
Yeha,  Bent  found  some  fragmentary  inscriptions  which 
made  allusion  to  a  place  called  Ava  or  Awa,  apparently 
situated  on  the  present  site  of  Yeha.  Bent  concludes  that 
Awa  was  the  original  name  of  Yeha.  One  of  these  frag- 
mentary inscriptions  reads  "his  house  (temple),  Awa."2 
This  inscription  is  written  in  the  Sabsean  script,  evidently 
by  an  immigrant  from  south  Arabia.  D.  H.  Miiller  has 
also  pointed  out  that  in  two  inscriptions  from  'Amran  (and 
there  are  really  more  than  two)  Ilmaqqahu  is  called  "  Lord 
of  Awam."3  Awam  was  probably  a  temple,  since  it  was 
situated  in  the  city,  Alw.*  This  confirms  Bent's  con- 
jecture6 that  Yeha  was  formerly  called  Awa,  and  was 

1  Cf.  D.  H.  Miiller's  Epigraphische  Denkmdlern  aus  Abessinien,  Wien, 
1894,  pp.  37,  38. 

aCf.  Theodore  Bent's  Sacred  City  of  the  Ethiopians,  pp.  145,  235,  and 
Miiller,  op.  cit.,  in  n.  7,  p.  61. 

'Muller,  op.  cit.,  p.  61,  Bent,  op.  cit.,  p.  237.  Cf.  CIS.,  Pt.  IV,  Vol.  I, 
Nos.  74,  80,  99, 126,  147,  and  155.  Cf.  Glaser's  Die  Abessinier  in  Arabia 
und  Afrika,  pp.  103-105,  and  Hale"vy  in  Revue  semitique,  Vol.  IV,  pp.  78-79. 

4  CIS.,  Pt.  IV,  Vol.  I,  No.  74*. 

*  Bent,  op.  cit. ,  p.  145. 


136  SEMITIC   ORIGINS 


founded  by  immigrants  from  south  Arabia  who  brought 
the  cultus  of  that  country  with  them.  Ilmaqqahu,  who  is 
described  as  "  Lord  of  Awam  "  we  have  already  found  to 
be  a  local  development  of  Athtar,  so  that  a  chain  of  epi- 
graphic  evidence  connects  the  worship  in  ancient  Yeha 
with  the  old  Arabian  mother  goddess. 

The  deities  of  this  cult  in  Arabia  were  often  thought  to 
reside  in  a  crag  or  stone,1  one  of  which  may  still  be  seen 
near  Taif,  in  which  Al-Lat  was  once  thought  to  make  her 
home.2  These  stones  corresponded  to  the  massebas  of  the 
northern  Semites.  The  temple  at  Yeha  still  exhibits 
traces  of  monoliths  which  answered  a  similar  purpose,  and 
like  those  at  Aksum,  to  be  mentioned  presently,  help  us 
to  identify  the  widely  extended  traces  of  this  ancient 
cult.3 

The  two  countries  on  the  opposite  shores  of  the  Red  Sea 
were  at  this  time  closely  united,  as  the  epigraphic  evidence 
shows,4  and  Glaser  contends  that  Habashat,  the  old  Semitic 
name  of  which  Abyssinia  is  a  corruption,  was  not  confined 
to  the  African  side  of  the  sea,  but  designated  a  part  of  the 
Arabian  peninsula  as  well.5  It  is,  however,  beyond  dis- 
pute, in  consequence  of  the  monumental  evidence,  that 
migration  to  Africa  took  place  after  the  masculine  Athtar 
had  been  developed,  and  that  close  political  relations  were 
maintained  between  the  two  regions  for  a  considerable 
period  of  time. 

Bent  has  shown  that  when  hard  pressed  by  their  foes  at 
Yeha,  the  Semitic  Abyssinians  removed  their  capital  to 
Aksum  and  transferred  their  shrine  thither.  This  shrine 

1Cf.  Wellhausen,  Heidentum,  2d  ed.,  pp.  45-64,  and  Smith,  Religion 
of  the  Semites,  2d  ed.,  pp.  201,  204,  and  340. 

2  Cf.  Doughty's  Arabia  Deserta,  Vol.  II,  pp.  515  and  517. 

'See  Bent,  op.  cit.,  p.  139,  and  Wylde,  Modern  Abyssinia,  pp.  150  ff., 
154  ff. 

4  Cf.  D.  H.  Mtiller,  Epigraphische  Denkmalern  aus  Abessinien,  pp. 
75-79,  and  Hcbraica,  Vol.  X,  p.  202  ff. 

6  See  his  book,  Die  Abessinier  in  Arabia  und  Afrika,  passim,  and 
ZDMG.,  Vol.  L,  pp.  294,  295. 


TRANSFORMATIONS  137 

was  marked  by  a  large  number  of  monoliths  which  served 
as  nosbs  or  massebas,  though  like  those  at  Yeha  they  were 
somewhat  more  developed  than  those  of  the  Israelites  and 
Cypriotes,  since  they  had  altars  at  their  bases.1  They  are 
taller  than  the  monoliths  found  by  Bliss  at  Tell-es-Safi  in 
Palestine,2  but  like  them  seem  to  have  been  massebas. 
These  objects,  whether  called  nosbs  or  massebas,  or  by  what- 
ever name,  were  in  general  in  the  form  of  rude  phalli,  and 
were  no  doubt  chosen  as  the  symbol  of  Semitic  deity 
because  of  their  resemblance  to  the  organ  of  the  god  of 
life.  Bent  noted  that  the  altars  attached  to  the  monoliths 
at  Aksum,  as  well  as  certain  decorations  which  they  bore, 
were  on  the  side  of  the  rising  sun.3  This,  he  inferred, 
connected  them  with  sun  worship.  The  presence  of  the 
name  Astar  at  Aksum,  together  with  the  chain  of  evidence 
which  connects  Athtar  with  Yeha,  enables  us  to  see  in  the 
orientation  of  these  monoliths  an  evidence  of  the  worship 
of  Athtar  Sharqan,  with  whom,  as  in  Arabia,  Shams  was 
probably  associated.  This  inference  is  confirmed  by  the 
traces  of  heathen  ritual  which  have  survived  in  the 
Abyssinian  church.  All  the  church  festivals  are  cele- 
brated with  music  and  dancing  like  heathen  orgies.4  On 
entering  the  church  the  threshold  and  door  posts  are 
kissed,  showing  that  they  are  held  to  be  sacred.6  The 
great  festival  of  the  year  is  the  feast  of  the  Cross,  which 
occurs  in  September,  the  month  of  the  old  Semitic  date 
harvest  festival,  and  which  we  have  already  identified 
with  it.6  An  important  part  of  the  celebration  of  this 
festival  is  the  building  of  fires  on  the  high  places  and  the 
slaughter  of  oxen  before  sunrise,  —  traits  not  only  heathen 
in  their  origin,  but  which  connect  themselves  in  form  with 

1Bent,  op.  cit.,  pp.  180,  182,  and  185. 

3  Cf .  Pal.  Expl.  Fund's  Quarterly  Statement  for  October,  1899,  pp. 
317-320. 

8  Bent,  op.  cit.,  p.  190. 

*  Bent,  ibid.,  pp.  63,  83,  84,  and  165,  also  A  Visit  to  Abyssinia,  by  W. 
Winstanley,  London,  1881,  Vol.  II,  p.  127. 

6  Winstanley,  op.  cit.,  p.  127.  •  Above,  p.  112. 


138  SEMITIC  ORIGINS 


the  morning  sacrifice  of  the  camel  to  Al-Uzza  by  the  Arabs 
of  Sinai,  which  the  son  of  Nilus  witnessed.1  The  autumn 
festival  of  the  old  mother  goddess  is  scarcely  disguised  by 
its  Christian  name.  The  church  at  Aksum  is  also  prob- 
ably the  old  temple ;  and  to  this  day  the  old  Semitic  right 
of  asylum  is  enjoyed  there  by  the  wrong-doer2  as  it  was 
in  Israel  at  the  altars  of  Yahwe.3 

Abyssinia  consists  for  the  most  part  of  a  high  tableland 
on  which  crops  are  easily  grown.     The  country  is  there- 
fore an  agricultural  one,  and  subsistence  is  decidedly  easier 
.  than  in  Arabia.4     The  central  and  southern  portions  are 
•j  especially  fertile.5    These  conditions  of  life  wrought,  so 
{  far  as  we  can  tell,  no  change  in  the  Semitic  family  or  the 
\  Semitic  conception  of  deity.     The  migration  occurred  so 
late  that  the  development  traced  in  Arabia  had  already 
taken  place,  and  the  cult  was  transplanted  bodily  to  Africa. 
The  inscription  of  Ezana,  which  contains  the  name  of 
Astar,  couples  with  it  two  other  deities,  Barras  and  Medr. 
These  gods  are,  I  believe,  not  otherwise  known,  but  it  is 
probable  that  one  or  both  of  them  arose  from  Athtar,  first 
having  been  used  as  an  epithet,  and  coming  afterwards  to 
be  regarded  as  a  distinct  god  on  account  of  its  separate 
name.     In  an  inscription  published  by  Halevy,6  Illmaq- 
qahu,  whom  we  have  already  shown  to  be  an  Athtar,  is 
called  "  Lord  of  Medr."     In  this  expression,  Medr  is  the 
name  of  a  place.7     According  to  a  passage  in  Iklil,  quoted 
by  Sprenger,8  there  stood  opposite  the  mosque  of  Medr  a 
large  castle  with  a  marble  slab  on  which  was  a  picture  of 

1  Smith,  Eeligion  of  the  Semites,  2d  ed.,  pp.  166,  281,  etc. 

'Bent,  op.  tit.,  p.  163. 

«  Cf.  Ex.  2112-".  and  1  Kgs.  1  and  2. 

4  Bent,  op.  cit.,  pp.  67,  79,  90,  91,  135,  136,  154,  and  202,  also  Wylde, 
op.  cit.,  ch.  xi. 

6  Geology  and  Zoology  of  Abyssinia,  by  W.  T.  Blandford,  The  Mac- 
millan  Co.,  1870,  p.  196. 

6  Journal  asiatique,  Ser.  6,  Vol.  XIX,  p.  164,  No.  172. 

7  Cf .  Mordtmann  and  Mtiller's  Sabdische  Denkmaler,  p.  69. 

8  Alte  Geographic  Arabiens,  p.  221. 


TRANSFORMATIONS  139 

the  sun  and  moon.  It  is  conceivable  that  Athtar  was 
called  "  Lord  of  Medr  "  until  the  title  was  abbreviated 
to  Medr,  who,  when  his  devotees  had  removed  to  Africa, 
was  in  time  regarded  as  a  god  separate  from  Astar. 

The  case  of  Barras  is  even  more  obscure.  D.  H.  Miiller 
has  conjectured1  that  he  was  the  god  of  thunder  and 
lightning  because  the  Arabic  barasa  means  to  gleam  or 
flash  (micare).  If  there  be  any  value  in  this  guess,  the 
name  "  Thunderer "  may  well  have  been  an  epithet  of 
Athtar.  These  are,  however,  only  possibilities,  and  the 
gods  may  have  originated  in  ways  quite  different,  —  they 
may,  for  example,  have  been  native  Abyssinian  deities, 
whose  place  was  fixed  before  the  Semitic  immigration, 
whose  favor  the  Semites  felt  bound  to  propitiate,  as  the 
Babylonians  whom  Sargon  settled  in  Samaria  felt  bound 
to  propitiate  Yah  we.2 

Turning  now  to  the  countries  north  of  Arabia,  we  come 
first  to  the  land  ofJVIoab.  This  country  forms  part  of  the 
fertile  strip  at  the  eastern  end  of  the  Mediterranean  which 
we  call  Syria.  This  region  is  cut  off  from  those  sterile  in- 
fluences which  render  Arabia  a  desert  by  the  proximity  of 
the  sea  and  by  its  two  ranges  of  mountains.3  A  rainfall  is 
thus  secured  and  the  country  redeemed  from  the  encroach- 
ments of  the  desert.  The  most  easterly  of  the  mountain 
ranges  of  Syria  forms  the  eastern  bulwark  of  Moab  toward 
the  desert,  bringing  its  high  plateaus  within  the  region  of 
rain  and  fertility.4  The  elevated  plains  of  Moab  must 
have  been  from  time  immemorial  excellent  pasture  lands ; 
and  the  few  glimpses  which  the  Old  Testament  and  the 
Moabite  Stone  give  us  of  its  industry,  confirm  us  in  the 
belief  that  the  Moabites  were  engaged  mostly  in  pastoral 
pursuits.  Thus  the  tribute  paid  by  Mesha  to  Omri  and 

1  Epigraphische  Denkmaler  aus  Abessinien,  p.  44. 
«  Cf.  2  Kgs.  1724-8*. 

•  See  G.  A.  Smith's  Historical  Geography  of  the  Holy  Land,  pp.  45-48. 

*  Cf .  G.  A.  Smith,  as  above,  and  Hull's  "Geology  of  Palestine"  in 
Hastings's  Dictionary  of  the  Bible. 


140  SEMITIC  OEIGINS 


Ahab  was  paid  in  wool,1  while  the  sacrifices  which  Mesha 
claims  to  have  offered  to  his  god  consisted  of  sheep  alone.2 

The  conditions  of  life  in  a  country  like  this  must  have 
been  far  easier  than  in  Arabia.  How  far  back  in  antiquity 
the  Semites  began  to  overrun  Moab,  no  one  knows.  The 
language  of  the  Moabite  Stone  is  practically  identical 
with  the  Hebrew  of  the  Old  Testament.  A  dialect 
identical  with  both  was  spoken  in  Canaan  in  the  fifteenth 
century  B.C.,  and  has  influenced  the  Babylonian  of  the 
El-Amarna  letters.3  In  their  traditions  the  Israelites  also 
recognize  the  Moabites  as  their  kinsmen.4  These  facts, 
together  with  the  character  of  the  Hebrew-Moabitish 
language,  which  belongs  to  the  north  Semitic  group, — 
languages  which  have  undergone  a  long  development 
independently  of  Arabic, — make  it  evident  that  the  Moa- 
bitish  emigration  was  part  of  a  movement  which  took 
place  many  centuries  before  the  date  of  the  Moabite 
Stone. 

In  a  country  like  Moab,  where  the  conditions  of  life  are 
not  as  severe  as  in  Arabia,  social  evolution  would  proceed, 
even  if  undisturbed  by  outside  foreign  influences,  much 
more  rapidly  than  in  the  Arabian  peninsula  itself.  Keas- 
bey's  researches  into  the  formation  of  the  clan6  have 
shown  that  in  the  pastoral  stage  of  civilization  the  patri- 
archal clan  is  formed  as  the  natural  result  of  the  environ- 
ment. The  conditions,  therefore,  in  Moab  must  have 
produced  a  patriarchal  family  centuries  earlier  than  it 
was  produced  in  Arabia.  The  few  references  to  Moab  in 
I  the  Old  Testament  and  the  text  of  the  Moabite  Stone 
1  confirm  this  view.  The  patriarchate  was  fully  established 
' there  before  the  ninth  century  B.C.  How  long  before  we 

1  Cf.  2  Kgs.  34  and  Moabite  Stone  (e.g.  Smend  and  Socin's  Inschrift 
des  Konigs  Mesa  von  Moab,  Freiburg,  1886),  11.  3-9. 

2  Cf.  Moabite  Stone,  11.  30,  31. 1p3  and  JX¥  are  the  terms  used. 

8  Cf.  Zimmern  in  Zeit.  d.  deutsch.  Palastina-  Vereins,  Vol.  XIII,  H.  3, 
and  ZA.,  Vol.  VI,  pp.  245-263;  also  my  "Peculiar  Use  of  /jam,"  in 
PAOS.,  1892,  p.  cxcix. 

4  See  Gen.  18  and  19.  6  See  above,  p.  30. 


TRANSFORMATIONS  141 

do  not  know.  Their  chief  divinity,  Chemosh,  is  a  male 
deity,  —  a  fact  which  presupposes  a  patriarchal  society  for 
a  time  sufficiently  long  to  influence  their  religious  con- 
ceptions.1 

Contrary  to  the  opinion  of  many  scholars,  1^  believe 
Chemosh  to  be  genetically  connected  with  thp  nlH  Spjmffin 
mother  goddess.  This  opinion  rests  in  part  on  the  anal- 
ogy of  the  south  Arabian  development  already  traced, 
but  largely  on  the  interpretation  of  the  name,  Ashtar- 
Chemosh  of  1.  17  of  Mesha's  inscription.  Baethgen,2 
Driver,3  Moore,4  and  Peake,6  hold  that  this  deity  Ashtar 
is  not  identical  with  Chemosh,  but  is  an  Ashtar,  or  Astarte, 
who  was  associated  in  worship  with  him.  Moore  suggests 
that  it  is  parallel  to  Malik-Ashtart 6  and  to  the  Ashtart 
worshipped  in  the  shrine  of  the  god  Hamman  of  the 
Ma'sub  inscription.7  This  view  appears  to  me  untenable 
on  the  following  grounds :  1.  The  parallels  urged  are  all 
much  later  in  date  than  the  Mesha  inscription.  They 
represent  movements  of  thought  influenced  by  Persian  or 
Greek  ideas,  or  by  both.  The  combination  Ashtar-Che- 
mosh  may  fittingly  be  compared  with  the  combination 
Yahwe-Elohim  with  which  it  is  approximately  contempo- 
rary,8 but  not  with  Melek-Ashtart,  which  is  considerably 
later.  Such  comparison  suggests  the  identification  of  god 
with  god  on  account  of  political  union,  but  not  the  union 
of  a  god  with  a  goddess.  2.  Ashtar  in  the  inscription  of 
Mesha  lacks  the  feminine  termination,  and  is  therefore 

1  Cf.  Moabite  Stone,  11.  1,  3,  6,  6,  9,  11,  12,  and  Nu.  21»,  1  Kgs.  IV-*, 
Jer.  487- "- «,  etc. 

2  Beitrdge  zur  semitischen  Religionsgeschichte,  1888,  p.  14. 
Article  "  Ashtoreth,"  Hastings's  Dictionary  of  the  Bible,  p.  171a. 
"  Chemosh  "  in  Encyc.  Bib. 

"  Chemosh  "  in  Hastings's  Dictionary  of  the  Bible. 

CIS.,Pt.  I,  Vol.  I,  No.  8. 

Cf.  G.  Hoffmann,  Uber  einige  phoen.  7ns.,  p.  20. 

This  statement  is  based,  not  on  the  form  Yahwe-Elohim  as  it  appears 
in  our  present  Biblical  text,  where  it  is  made  to  appear  to  be  a  harmoniza- 
tion with  the  late  P  document,  but  on  the  practical  identification  of  the 
two  when  the  J  and  E  documents  were  united  about  650  B.C. 


142  SEMITIC  ORIGINS 


a  god  and  not  a  goddess.  True,  in  primitive  Semitic  the 
name  designated  a  goddess  without  the  help  of  a  feminine 
ending ;  it  is  also  true  that  in  Babylonia  and  Assyria  the 
name  continued  to  do  so  down  to  the  latest  times ;  but 
wherever  the  name  has  been  found  among  the  southern 
Semites  without  the  feminine  termination,  it  designates 
either  an  actual  or  a  nascent  god,  and  wherever  it  is  found 
among  the  western  Semites  designating  a  goddess  it  has 
the  feminine  ending.  It  seems  safe  to  conclude,  there- 
fore, that  the  name  in  Moab  which  was  on  the  border  of 
Arabia  and  Canaan  and  intimately  connected  with  the  lat- 
ter, would,  when  lacking  a  feminine  termination,  designate 
a  god.  To  break  the  force  of  this  consideration  one  of  two 
things  should  be  clearly  proven,  either  that  the  feminine 
ending  was  added  to  the  name  by  the  rest  of  the  western 
Semites  after  the  time  of  Mesha,  or  that  Babylonian  influ- 
ence is  responsible  for  its  disuse  here.  Although  all  the 
Biblical  and  Phoenician  material  containing  the  name  is 
later  than  the  Moabite  Stone,  the  name  occurs  twice  in 
the  El-Amarna  tablets 1  as  the  name  of  a  city,  —  no  doubt 
the  Biblical  place  which  bore  the  name  "Ashtaroth," 
named  from  the  goddess,  —  and  here  the  feminine  ending 
appears.  The  west  Semitic  custom  had  attached  the 
feminine  termination  to  the  name  by  the  fourteenth  cen- 
tury B.C.,  and  that  too  on  Moab's  very  border.  The  only 
reason  for  suspecting  Babylonian  influence  in  Moab  is  the 
possible  connection  of  a  proper  name  or  two  with  Babylo- 
nian names,  such  as  Mount  Nebo  with  the  name  of  the  Baby- 
lonian god  Nabu.  But  even  if  the  name  of  a  mountain 
and  a  city  survived  from  the  time  of  Babylonian  occupa- 
tion (which  is  uncertain),  that  is  insufficient  ground  for 
supposing  that  the  name,  Ishtar,  survived  for  six  hundred 
years  without  modification,  when  all  the  neighboring 

i  Cf.  KB.,  Vol.  V,  pp.  263  (No.  142™),  and  353  (No.  23721),  also  Gen. 
148,  and  Josh.  1381.  For  the  identification  of  the  localities  mentioned  in 
these  letters,  and  the  demonstration  of  their  east  Jordan  situation,  see 
Sayce's  Patriarchal  Palestine,  pp.  133  ff.  and  152  ff. 


TRANSFORMATIONS  143 


people,  with  whom  the  Moabites  were  intimately  associ- 
ated, used  it  with  the  feminine  termination.  3.  Mesha 
equates  Ashtar-Chemosh  with  Chemosh.  He  says  (1.  14 
ff.),  "  And  Chemosh  said  to  me  'go  and  take  Nebo  against 
Israel,'  and  I  went  by  night  and  fought  against  it  from 
break  of  dawn  till  noon,  and  I  took  it  and  killed  all  of 
them,  seven  thousand  men  and  boys  and  the  women  and 
girls  and  slave-girls,  for  I  had  made  them  harim  to  Ashtar- 
Chemosh."  Now  it  seems  clear  that  the  king  would  devote 
his  victims  to  the  god  who  sent  him  forth  to  battle,  —  the 
god  who  held,  as  the  inscription  shows  throughout,  the 
same  relation  to  the  nation  as  a  whole,  which  Yahwe  bore 
to  Israel.  Chemosh  appears  alone  at  the  end  of  the  in- 
scription, 11.  32,  33.  Ashtar-Chemosh  cannot,  therefore, 
be  even  in  part  a  different  god  from  Chemosh.  If  under 
such  circumstances  he  had  desired  to  associate  a  goddess 
with  Chemosh,  he  would  hardly  have  put  her  before  him. 
It  seems  more  natural  to  suppose  that  Ashtar-Chemosh 
like  Yahwe-Elohim  is  the  union  of  two  names  into  one 
compound  designation,  either  element  of  which  might  be 
used  for  the  god  alone. 

The  course  of  religious  development  in  Moab  must, 
therefore,  have  been  not  unlike  that  in  south  Arabia; 
the  mother  goddess  under  the  pressure  of  social  transfor- 
mation became  a  father  god,  and  through  the  use  of  epi- 
thets gradually  came  to  be  called  by  another  name.  This 
development,  as  already  observed,  was  earlier  by  centuries 
than  that  in  Arabia. 

If  this  be  true  wj^gjiould  erpe-ct  f^G]Ii£gh,..fo-  ^p  a-god  of 
fertility.  There  is  even  in  the  very  scanty  material  extant, 
some  indication  that  this  was  the  case.  An  old  poem, 
twice  quoted  in  the  Old  Testament,1  makes  the  Moabites 
his  sons  and  daughters.  He  seems  also  to  have  been  a 
baal,  or  god  of  the  land.  I  can  see  no  good  reason  for 
denying  with  Moore,3  a  real  identity  between  Chemosh 

»  Nu.  21 »-»  and  Jer.  48  «  « 

*  "Chemosh,"  in  Encyc.  Bib.    Moore's  denial  probably  is  intended  to 


144  SEMITIC   OKIGINS 


and  Baal  Maon,1  nor  for  his  denial  of  the  substantial 
identity  of  Chemosh  and  Baal  Peor  (Nu.  25 3,  Hos.  910), 
long  ago  perceived  by  Jerome.  Baethgen  is  nearer  the 
truth  when  he  regards  both  of  them  as  forms  of  Baal.2 
We  do  not  need  to  insist  that  the  people  always  thought 
of  the  absolute  identity  of  the  god  who  was  worshipped  at 
one  shrine  with  the  god  who  was  worshipped  at  another, 
any  more  than  the  untutored  Catholic  in  modern  Europe 
always  is  conscious  of  the  identity  of  the  Virgins 
adored  at  different  shrines ;  but  the  analogy  of  the  Ath- 
tars  of  south  Arabia  and  of  the  Baals  of  Syria  make  it 
practically  certain  that  all  had  their  root  in  the  same  god 
of  fertility,  by  whatsoever  name  each  may  have  been  called. 

We  learn  from  the  prophet  Hosea  (9 10),  that  the  gross 
practices  characteristic  of  the  worship  of  the  Semitic 
mother  goddess  in  other  localities,  and  which  were  so  ab- 
horrent to  the  prophets,  were  a  part  of  the  cult  of  this 
IMoabitish  god.  No  doubt  therefore  as  in  south  Arabia  a 
form  of  this  goddess  still  existed  in  Moab  side  by  side  with 
the  male  deity  which  had  grown  out  of  her,  and  that  these 
two,  with  slightly  varying  attributes  at  different  shrines, 
perpetuated  in  their  worship  the  features  which  pertained 
to  this  cult  in  other  countries.  This  result  remains  even 
if  one  were  to  disagree  with  the  argument  given  above 
for  the  sex  of  Ashtar  in  Moab  ;  for  if  Ashtar  were  a  god- 
dess, Chemosh,  who  is  joined  with  her,  would  of  necessity 
be  her  male  counterpart,  or  he  could  not  be  so  joined.  The 
term  baal  would  apply  to  him  as  aptly  as  we  shall  see  that 
it  applied  in  Syria  and  Phoenicia.  How  the  name  Chemosh 
came  to  be  applied  to  this  god  we  cannot  tell ;  it  is  still  a 
puzzle. 

If  now  we  turn  to  Phoenicia  and  Palestine,  we  come  to 
a  land  different  in  many  ways  from  any  of  those  hitherto 
studied.  Its  contour  is  much  more  broken,  and  within 

mean  no  more  than  that  the  gods  were  worshipped  at  different  shrines 
and  therefore  often  thought  of  as  practically  distinct. 

1  Moabite  Stone,  1.  30.  2  Op.  cit.,  p.  15. 


TRANSFOHMATIONS  145 


comparatively  narrow  limits  there  is  greater  variety  of 
scenery  and  climate  than  elsewhere  in  the  Semitic  world. 
It  is  a  maritime  country,  bordering  as  it  does  on  the 
Mediterranean  coastland.  Its  two  mountain  ranges, — 
the  Lebanon,  with  its  hills  tapering  off  into  southern 
Judaea,  and  the  range  east  of  Jordan, — intercept  the 
moisture  from  the  sea  and  give  an  abundant  rainfall. 
The  deeply  depressed  valley  of  the  Jordan  and  Dead  Sea 
affords  a  climate  of  tropical  warmth,  while  the  snow-capped 
heights  of  Lebanon  present  the  opposite  extreme.1  The 
soil  along  the  maritime  plain  and  in  the  valleys  of  Esdrse- 
lon  and  the  Jordan  is  very  fertile,  while  that  of  the  hill- 
sides is  well  adapted  to  the  vine.  Trees  have  always  grown 
in  abundance  on  the  hills,  especially  in  the  Lebanon  region. 
The  Assyrian  kings  boast  often  that  they  took  from  here 
beams  with  which  to  adorn  their  palaces.2  The  low-lying 
lands  have  always  been  well  adapted  to  grain,  while  in 
ancient  times  the  palm  tree  grew  in  the  Jordan  valley  and 
along  the  sea  coast.  The  olive  and  the  vine  were  the  chief 
fruit  bearers,  the  former  being  native  in  this  region  and 
the  latter  probably  so.3  The  land  has,  in  historical  times, 
been  a  land  of  orchards,  the  apricot,  fig,  pomegranate, 
orange,  citron,  mulberry,  pistachio,  and  almond  being  its 
chief  fruits,  while  the  sycamore  and  carob  tree  yielded  a 
living  for  the  very  poor.*  Wheat,  barley,  and  many  vege- 
tables, such  as  onions,  could  be  produced  in  abundance.  In 
such  a  land  agriculture  was  born  in  the  remote  prehistoric 
past,  and  its  birth  was  inevitable.  As  George  Adam  Smith 
remarks : 6  "  To  pass  from  the  desert  into  Syria  is  to  leave 
the  habits  of  the  nomadic  life  for  those  of  the  agricultural. 
The  process  may  be  gradual,  and  generally  has  been  so, 
but  the  end  is  inevitable." 

1  G.  A.  Smith's  Historical  Geography  of  the  Holy  Land,  ch.  ii. 

2  Cf.  e.g.  KB.,  Vol.  I,  pp.  41,  108,  and  Vol.  II,  p.  113. 
*  G.  A.  Smith,  op.  cit.,  p.  82. 

*Cf.  Amos  7M  (Amos  gathered  sycamore  figs),  and  Luke  15"  (the 
prodigal  son  ate  carob  pods). 
6  Op.  cit.,  p.  86. 


146  SEMITIC   ORIGINS 


The  beginnings  of  agricultural  life  in  this  region  are 
shroudeom  obscurity.       In  the  El-Amarna  letters   the 
prince  of  Kumidi,  near  Gebal,  sent,  we  are  told,  a  tribute 
of  olive  oil  to  the  king  of  Egypt.1     The  Egyptian  monu- 
ments of   the  middle  empire  tell  the  same  tale.     Wine, 
figs,  grain,  and  olive  oil  are  mentioned  as  products  of  Syria 
and  PhcEnicia,2  as  well  as  several  minerals,  such  as  lead 
and  copper.     Agriculture  therefore  must  have  antedated 
in  these  lands  the  fifteenth  century  before  Christ.     Agri- 
|  culture  may  have  been  preceded  by  the  pastoral  stage  of 
•  society,  and  the  beginnings  of  the  patriarchate  and  conse- 
quently the  general  supremacy  of  male  deities  may  date 
'•  from  this  stage  of  development.8 

Of  the  coming  of  the  Semites  into  this  region  we  know 
little.  Lugalzaggisi,  king  of  Erech  4000  B.C.  or  earlier, 
whom  Hilprecht  believes  to  have  been  a  Semite,4  claims  to 
have  subdued  the  country  as  far  west  as  the  Mediterra- 
nean Sea.5  Sargon  of  Agade,  about  3800  B.C.,  conquered 
the  Westland,  or,  as  scholars  generally  regard  it,  the  land 
of  the  Amurru  or  Amorites  on  the  north  of  Canaan.6  A 
contract  tablet  has  been  discovered  which  makes  reference 
to  it  in  its  date.  From  this  time  onward  many  Babylonian 
kings  claim  to  have  conquered  the  Westland.  That  the 
claim  was  real  the  El-Amarna  tablets  have  proven  by 
showing  that  Babylonian  culture  had  so  penetrated  the 
country  that  the  language  and  script  of  Babylonia  had 
become  the  regular  vehicle  of  official  communication.  Jn 
the  fifteenth  or  sixteenth  century  B.C.  the  Egyptians  oyer- 

1  Cf.  KB.,  Vol.  V,  p.  261.   For  location  of  Kumidi,  cf.  pp.  141, 187-189, 
and  201. 

2  Cf.  W.  Max  Muller's  Asien  und  Europa,  pp.  155  and  183. 
«  Hilderbrand's  Eecht  und  Sitte,  pp.  31-34. 

*  Cf.  OB/.,  Pt.  II,  p.  54  ff.    • 
6  Hilprecht,  op.  cit.,  p.  53. 

•  Cf.  Thureau  Dangin  in  Comptes  rendus  de  V academic  d*  inscriptions, 
1896,  p.  358  ff.  (identical  with  his  Tablettes  chaldeennes  inedites,  No.  17), 
also  Driver  in  Hogarth's  Authority  and  Archaeology,  p.  40.     For  the 
identification  of  Martu  (Westland),  with  Amurru,  see  Schrader  in  Sitz- 
ungsberichte  of  the  Berlin  Academy,  1894,  p.  1301. 


TRANSFORMATIONS  147 

ran  theregion,  and  at  a  date  which  we  cannot  now  deter- 
mine the  Phoenicians  had  made  their  way  into  it.  The 
Hittites  also  gained  a  strong  foothold  in  the  North  earlier 
than  the  Egyptian  conquest.  Great  as  the  mixture  of 
races  became,  the  Amorites  appear  to  have  maintained 
their  identity  down  to  the  Hebrew  period.  Their  name 
is  still  used  by  Amos  and  by  the  Elohist  to  designate  the 
old  inhabitants  of  Palestine.1  This  people  who  persisted 
so  long  in  a  region  where  many  races  strove  for  the 
supremacy  had  then  assumed  by  3800  B.C.  an  importance 
so  great  that  their  land  was  coveted  by  the  far-off  Baby- 
lonian. If  they  had  not  then  developed  agriculture,  it  is 
difficult  to  understand  why  the  country  should  have  gained 
such  prominence,  unless  there  were  fisheries  to  make  their 
land  conspicuous.  There  is  some  probability  that  the 
agriculture  which  we  are  able  to  establish  by  monumental 
evidence  in  the  El-Amarna  period  is  at  least  some  twenty- 
five  hundred  years  older  than  that.  The  Amorites,  like 
other  primitive  peoples,  must  have  had  many  local  numina, 
the  most  important  of  which  would  on  the  principles 
already  established  be  masculine  deities. 

What  would  happen  when  a  band  of  Semites  entered 
this  land,  we  may  learn  from..  2  Kgs.  IT^f*  We  are 
informed  there  that  the  colony  of  Babylonians  whom 
Sargon  settled  in  Samaria  worshipped  their  own  national 
gods  until  such  disasters  overtook  them  that  they  felt 
compelled  to  learn  the  worship  of  the  god  of  the  land. 
The  worship  of  Yahwe  which  was  thus  begun  by  them 
did  not  cause  them  to  forsake  their  old  deities,  but  for  a 
time  both  were  worshipped  together,  and  at  last  a  new 
composite  worship  resulted.  If  one  should  object  that 
this  occurred  very  late  in  Semitic  history,  the  objection 
would  only  strengthen  our  argument,  for  what  could 
happen  at  so  late  a  date  must  a  fortiori  have  happened  in 

1  Cf.  Wellhausen,  Jahrb.  f.  deut.  TheoL,  Vol.  XXI,  p.  602  ;  Ed. 
Meyer  in  ZATW.,  Vol.  I,  pp.  121-127;  and  Stade,  Geschichte,  Vol.  I, 
p.  110. 


148  SEMITIC  ORIGINS 


more  primitive  times.1  Not  altogether  unlike  this  in 
principle  was  the  custom  of  the  Aztecs  in  Mexico  to  sacri- 
fice to  the  gods  of  conquered  countries  to  propitiate  them.2 
At  the  period  covered  by  the  Old  Testament  and  the 
Phoenician  inscriptions  the  chief  god  of  each  locality  was 
known_as  a.j&a'a/j — a  term  which  denotes  the  proprietor 
or  inhabitant  of  some  favored  place  or  district.  Robert- 
son Smith  thought3  that  among  the  Semites  it  designated 
the  divine  proprietor  of  naturally  irrigated  land,  and  there 
is  much  to  be  said  for  this  view.  Every  city  had  its 

f_  Tf       i  **  —       ii   i 

Baal,4  and  there  would  seem  to  have  been  as  many  of 
them  as  there  were  towns,  cities,  sanctuaries,  or  objects 
which  appeared  to  the  worshippers  to  have  a  religious 
significance.  Thus  there  was  the  Baal  of  Tyre,  the  Baal 
of  Sidon,  Baal-Hamman,  Baal-Barith,  Baal-Shamem,  Baal- 
Zebub,  etc.  In  parts  of  Palestine  this  god  was  identified 
with  the  sun  and  called  Shemesh.  The  town  of  Beth- 
Shemesh  (1  Sam.  6)  was  named  from  his  worship. 

This  worship  of  Baal  was  in  many  places  connected 
with  the  old  mother  goddess  Ashtart;  e.g.  at  Sidon  an 
Ashtart  of  the  name  of  Baal  is  coupled  with  Baal  as  his 
consort,5  and  in  the  Old  Testament  Baal  and  Ashtoreth 
are  frequently  classed  together  as  though  they  belonged 
to  the  same  cult.6  It  may  be  added  that  in  North  Africa, 
which  was  colonized  from  Phoenicia,  the  mother  goddess 
Tanith,  whom  I  have  elsewhere  shown  to  be  an  Ashtart,7 
is  constantly  mentioned  with  Baal,  and  is  sometimes  called 
"The  Face  of  Baal."8  What  connection  has  this  worship 
with  the  primitive  conditions  which  we  have  discovered 
for  the  Semitic  stock  ? 

Moore  suggests  that  these  Baals  were  originally  distinct 

1  Cf.  Budde,  Religion  of  Israel  to  the  Exile,  1899,  p.  54  ff. 

2  Cf.  Reville's  Native  Eeligions  of  Mexico  and  Peru  (Hibbert  Lec- 
tures, 1884),  2d  ed.,  p.  31. 

8  Eel.  of  Sem.,  2d  ed.,  p.  97  ff.  6  Cf.  CIS.,  Pt  I,  Vol.  I,  No.  3". 

*  Cf.  Jer.  2»,  uii.  e  See,  e.g.,  Jud.  10«. 

T  Hebraica,  Vol.  X,  pp.  48-53. 

8  CLCIS.,  Pt.  I,  Vol.  I,  Nos.  195,  263,  and  380. 


TRANSFORMATIONS  149 

local  numina.1  In  one  sense  that  is  no  doubt  true,  just  as 
the  Ashtars  of  the  primitive  Semites  were  distinct  numina, 
though  each  numen  in  its  oasis  was  formed  under  condi- 
tions so  similar  to  those  which  prevailed  in  other  oases 
that  all  of  them  possessed  a  common  form. 

When  the  Phoenicians  or  their  ancestors  first  entered 
Syria,  it  is  clear  that  they  brought  the  worship  of  their 
Semitic  goddess  with  them ;  the  survival  of  her  worship 
as  an  independent  deity  at  Sidon  and  Gebal2  is  sufficient 
to  prove  this.  We  have  shown  that  even  in  Arabia,  as 
society  changed  to  the  patriarchal  type,  this  goddess  was 
transformed  into  a  god,  and  it  is  clear  that  in  an  agricul- 
tural country  like  Syria,  already  inhabited  by  a  settled 
and  comparatively  civilized  people,  which  had  for  many 
centuries  been  swept  by  wars  of  conquest,3  the  process 
would  be  greatly  hastened.  Each  locality  would  have  its 
local  god  worshipped  by  the  Amurru,  or  Amorites,  or  who- 
ever the  previous  inhabitants  were  ;  the  incoming  Semites, 
like  the  Babylonians  settled  in  Samaria4  (2  Kgs.  1725f<), 
would  feel  compelled  to  worship  it ;  they  would  at  first 
worship  their  own  goddess  also  until  in  time  her  cult 
would  be  blended  in  greater  or  less  degree  with  that 
of  the  god,  as  that  of  Yahwe  came  in  time  to  be  blended 
in  Israel  with  that  of  Baal.6  That  this  actually  occurred 
is  shown  by  one  of  the  El-Amarna  tablets,  which  refers 
to  the  goddess  as  "  Ba'alat."  6  Thus  syncretism  helped  the 
progress  of  natural  development,  and  made  a  male  deity 
supreme. 

At  Tyre  the  local  Baal  was  called  Melqart,7  or  "King 

1  Article  "Baal"  in  Encyc.  Bib. 

2  See  below,  Chapter  VI. 

*  For  a  discussion  of  the  effects  of  war  upon  the  sex  of  primitive  agri- 
cultural earth  goddesses,  see  below,  Chapter  V. 

4  See  above,  p.  147. 

6  See  Budde's  Religion  of  Israel  to  the  Exile,  Lect.  II,  and  below, 
Chapter  VII. 

«  See  KB.,  Vol.  V,  p.  139. 

'  Cf.  CIS.,  Ft.  I,  Vol.  1,  No.  122. 


150  SEMITIC   OKIGINS 


of  the  city."  It  was  doubtless  the  cult  of  this  god  which 
the  Tyrian  princess  Jezebel  introduced  into  Israel.1  We 
learn  from  Philo  of  Byblos  that  Astarte,  Zeus  Demarous, 
and  Adodos  reigned  over  the  countries,  and  that  Astarte 
took  up  her  abode  in  Tyre.2  Zeus  Demarous  is  probably 
Melqart,  while  Adodos,  or  Hadad,  does  not  belong  to  Tyre, 

]|  but. is  the  Aramaean  equivalent  of  Melqart.  Thus  at  Tyre 
a  god  and  a  goddess  had  developed  in  the  cult,  although 

I  the  persistency  with  which  the  old  mother  goddess  clung 
to  her  independence  is  shown  by  the  fact  that  Philo  still 
names  her  first.  From  the  Old  Testament  we  learn,  what 
we  should  naturally  expect,  that  in  most  Canaanitish  towns 
the  Baal  was  the  chief  deity,3  and  the  same  appears  to 
have  been  the  case  in  most  of  the  Phoenician  colonies,  since 
Baal  is  often  addressed  alone  in  their  votive  inscriptions.4 
Perhaps  the  same  was  true  of  North  Africa,  though  there 
are  some  peculiar  phenomena  in  the  votive  inscriptions 
from  that  land.  In  the  numerous  cippi  published  in  the 
Corpus  Inscriptionum  Semiticarum,  Tanith,  though  often 
called  "face  of  Baal,"  is  usually  mentioned  before  him. 
The  goddess  is  clearly  subordinate  to  the  god,  but  the 
older  Semitic  feeling  still  leads  the  worshipper  to  place  her 
name  first.  The  epithet,  "face  of  Baal,"  probaby  sur- 
vived from  a  time  of  transition  when  both  masculine  and 
feminine  qualities  were  ascribed  to  the  goddess,  so  that 
she  was  represented  with  a  female  form  and  a  bearded 
face.5 

At  Sidon  still  a  different  development  occurred.  Sidon 
had  its  Baal,  to  which  was  attached,  as  has  been  remarked, 

1  See  1  Kgs.  18. 

2  See  Eusebius,  Preparatio  Evangelica,  ed.  Dindorf,  I,  10,  31 ;  Orelli's 
Sanchoniathontis  Fragmenta,  p.  30 ;  cf.  Hebraica,  Vol.  X,  p.  31. 

8  Cf.  Jer.  11»«. 

*  Cf.  CIS.,  Ft.  I,  Vol.  I,  Nos.  123,  138,  and  147,  and  the  inscriptions 
published  by  Philippe  Berger,  Actes  du  XIe  cong.  d.  orent.,  Sec.  IV,  p. 
273  ff. 

6  See  below,  Chapter  VI,  and  an  article,  "An  Androgynous  Babylonian 
Divinity  "  in  JO  AS.,  Vol.  XXP  f.,  185  ff. 


TRANSFORMATIONS  151 

an  Ashtart  "of  the  name  of  Baal";  but  side  by  side  with 
this  pair  the  mother  goddess  alone  held  her  supremacy  also, 
for  separate  from  the  "Ashtart  of  the  name  of  Baal"  was 
another  Ashtart,  whose  priest  king  Tabnith  was,  and  whose 
priestess,  his  wife.1  This  fact  confirms  the  hint  given  in 
the  Old  Testament  phrase:  "Ashtoreth,  the  abomination 
of  the  Sidonians."2  In  the  midst  of  changes  wrought  by 
syncretism  and  social  transformation  the  worship  of  the 

a  -    •-•       i       •    i    -  i  M  nan    — .  'I  mtmmt    ..       -^•^••^•^••B  .  i  ^      IIH»»»I» 

primitive  goddess  had  survived  in  comparative  pyrity  at 


Sidon,  notwithstanding  that  in  one  phase  she  had  been 
subjected  to  Baal.  We  shall  see  later  that  this  was  not 
an  isolated  phenomenon. 

There  are  some  curious  combinations  of  divinities  in  the 
Phoenician  inscriptions,  such  as  Melek-Ashtart,  Eshmun- 
Ashtart,  and  Eshmun-Melqart,  but  as  I  have  pointed  out 
elsewhere,3  these  are  not  primitive.  They  resulted  from 
influences  which  came  into  force  in  the  West  after  contact 
with  Persians  and  Greeks. 

We  learn  from  Old  Testament  denunciations  of  Baalized4 
Yahwe  worship  that  Baal  was  worshipped  on  hill-tops,  under 
green  trees,  in  spots  marked  by  'asheras,  massebas,  and 
hammanim.  Images  were  not  always  present,  but  when 
there  was  a  shrine  the  god  was  often  represented  by  the 
image  of  a  bull.  At  his  altars  offerings  of  firstfruits  and 
firstlings  were  made  ;  and  beside  them  fornication  was  not 
only  licensed,  but  consecrated.  The  god  had  priests  who 
leaped  upon  the  altar  and  gashed  themselves  with  knives, 
and  also  a  retinue  of  prophets.  Of  the  connection  of  all 
this  with  the  worship  of  Yahwe  we  shall  speak  in  a  future 
chapter.  Similar  organizations  of  the  Baal  cult  existed 
elsewhere.  A  fragmentary  inscription  attests  a  similar 

1  Cf.  CIS.,  Pt.  I,  Vol.  I,  No.  3;  Revue  archeologique,  July,  1887,  p.  2; 
and  Hebraica,  Vol.  X,  p.  29. 

8  2  Kgs.  23". 

•  In  an  article  entitled  "  West  Semitic  Deities  with  Compound  Names  " 
in  JBL.,  Vol.  XX,  pp.  22-27. 


152  SEMITIC  ORIGINS 


organization  in  Cyprus.1  Among  the  Edomites  the  god 
seems  to  have  been  called  Edom,2  and  from  his  high  place3 
it  seems  that  his  worship  was  kindred  to  that  of  the  Baalim. 
Both  he  and  the  god  Gad,  for  whom  the  tribe  of  Gad  was 
named,4  probably  at  the  bottom  were  Baalim,  which  orig- 
inated like  the  others  from  the  mother  goddess. 

The  conditions  in  the  north  of  Syria  were  not  strikingly 
dissimilar  to  those  which  prevailed  in  Phoenicia  and  Ca- 
naan. The  chief  god  of  this  region  was  called  Hadad, 
though  other  gods  were  not  unknown.5  From  the  general 
principles  thus  far  established  we  should  expect  the  origin 
of  Hadad  to  be  not  unlike  that  of  a  Baal.  For  reasons 
which  will  appear  as  we  proceed  it  will  be  better  to  post- 
pone the  discussion  of  this  great  Aramaean  god  until  we 
have  passed  in  review  the  gods  of  Babylonia  and  Assyria. 
The  problems  of  these  countries  are,  however,  so  complex 
that  they  merit  a  chapter  to  themselves. 

1  CIS.,  ft.  I,  Vol.  I,  No.  86. 

2  Cf.  W.  R.  Smith,  Bel  of  Sent. ,  2d  ed.,  p.  42. 

«  Cf.  Robinson's  article,  "  The  High  Place  at  Petra,"  in  Biblical  World, 
Vol.  XVI,  p.  66. 

4  Cf .  Oriental  Studies  of  the  Oriental  Club  of  Philadelphia,  p.  108. 

6  See  the  Berlin  Museum's  Mittheilungen  aus  dem  orientalische  Samm- 
lungen,  Heft  XI,  p.  83. 


CHRONOLOGICAL  TABLE 


153 


CHRONOLOGICAL  TABLE 


BABYLONIAN  CHRONOLOGY 

B.C. 
E.  A.   Hoffman  tablet  and  Father 

Scheil's  archaic  texts,  cir.  6000- 

6500. 

Blau  monuments,  cir.  5500-5000. 
En-shag-kush-an-na,  king  of  Kengi, 

before  4600. 
Urkagina,   king  of    Shirpurla,  cir. 

4600. 

Ur-Nina,  king  of  Shirpurla,  cir.  4300. 
Eannadu  I,  king  of  Shirpurla,  cir. 

4150. 
Entemena,  Patesi  of  Shirpurla,  cir. 

4125. 
Eannadu  II,  Patesi  of  Shirpurla,  cir. 

4100. 
Lugalzaggisi  of  Gishban  and  Erech, 

cir.  4000. 

Lugaltarsi,  king  of  Kish,  cir.  3900. 
Manishtuirba,  king  of  Kish,  cir.  3850. 
Alu-usharshid,  king  of  Kish,  cir.  3830. 
Sargon,  king  of  Agade,  cir.  3800. 
Naran-Sin,  king  of  Agade,  cir.  3750. 
Ur-Bau,  Patesi  of  Shirpurla,  cir.  3200. 
Gudea,  Patesi  of  Shirpurla,  cir.  3000. 
Dynasties  of  Ur,  Erech,  Isin,  and 

Larsa,  3000-2400. 
Ur-Gur,  king  of  Ur,  cir.  2500. 
Dungi,  king  of  Ur,  cir.  2450. 
First  dynasty  of  Babylon,  2399-2094. 
KhammurshL.  ktogyf  Ttahyinn ,  2287- 

"523?. 
Second  dynasty  of  Babylon,  2094- 

cir.  1730. 
Third  dynasty  of  Babylon,  cir.  1730- 

1150. 
Agum-kak-rimi,  king  of    Babylon, 

cir.  1700. 
Eurigalzu  II,  king  of  Babylon,  cir. 

1300. 


ASSYRIAN  CHRONOLOGY 

B.C. 


Ishmi-Dagan,  Patesi  of  Assyria,  cir. 

1840. 
Shamshi-Ramman,  Patesi  of  Assyria, 

cir.  1820. 


Shalmeneser  I,  king  of  Assyria,  cir. 
1330-1300. 


154 


SEMITIC   ORIGINS 


CHRONOLOGICAL  TABLE  —  Continued 


BABYLONIAN  CHRONOLOGY 
B.C. 

Nebuchadnezzar  I,  king  of  Babylon, 
1140  (founder  of  Pashi  dynasty). 

Nabu-apal-iddin,  king  of  Babylon, 
cir.  880. 


Nabopolasser,  king  of  Babylon,  625- 
604. 

Nebuchadnezzar  II,  king  of  Babylon, 
604-562. 

Nabonidos,  king  of  Babylon,  555- 
638. 

Cyrus  conquered  Babylon,  538. 

Babylon  under  the  Persians,  538-331. 

Babylon  under  Greeks,  from  331 
onward. 

Inscription  of  Antiochus  Soter  (la- 
test dated  cuneiform  inscription) 
from  between  280-260. 


ASSYBIAN  CHRONOLOGY 
B.C. 

Tiglath-pileser  I,  king  of  Assyria, 

cir.  1120-1100. 
Assur-nasir-pal,  king  of  Assyria,  885- 

860. 
Shalmeneser  II,  king  of  Assyria,  860- 

824. 
Tiglath-pileser  III,  king  of  Assyria, 

745-727. 

Sargon,  king  of  Assyria,  722-705. 
Sennacherib,  king  of  Assyria,  706- 

681. 
Esarhaddon,  king  of  Assyria,  681- 

668. 
Assurbanipal,  king  of  Assyria,  668- 

626. 
Assyria  conquered  by  Babylon,  606. 


CHAPTER  V 

TRANSFORMATIONS   IN  BABYLONIA 

IT  is  no  easy  task  to  apply  the  principles  which  have 
been  traced  in  the  preceding  pages  to  the  phenomena  of 
the  religion  of  Babylonia.  The  civilization  of  the  Meso- 
potamian  valley  is  so  old  that  its  beginnings  can  only  be 
conjectured ;  our  information  is  so  fragmentary  concern- 
ing the  various  periods  of  which  we  know  something  that 
no  complete  history  of  the  country  can  yet  be  written, 
while  the  problem  of  its  racial  and  linguistic  origins  is  so 
complicated  that  it  has  become  the  subject  of  heated  con- 
troversy. Notwithstanding  all  these  obstacles,  the  princi- 
ples of  economic  and  social  development  can  be  applied 
with  considerable  certainty,  and  by  their  application  much 
light  is  shed  upon  some  of  the  complicated  problems  con- 
nected with  the  genesis  of  Babylonian  civilization. 

The  most  ancient  civilizations  of  the  old  world  were 
developed  in  the  great  river  basins  of  the  Nile,  the  Tigris- 
Eaphrates,  the  Ganges,  and  the  Yang-tske  rivers,  where  the 
soil  was  rendered  fertile  by  new  material  brought  down  by 
the  water.1  The  civilization  of  Babylonia  was  probably 
the  oldest  of  these.  In  the  judgment  of  most  Assyriolo- 
gists  we  have  written  inscriptions  from  Babylonia  dating 
from  a  time  as  remote  as  4500  B.C.,2  and  it  is  probable  that 

1  Cf.  The  International  Geography,  ed.  by  Hugh  Robert  Mill,  London, 
1899,  p.  436. 

2  The  writer  holds  with  most  Assyriologists  that  the  statement  of  Nabo- 
nidos  (KB.,  Vol.  Ill,  Pt.  2,  p.  105),  that  3200  years  elapsed  between  him 
and  Naram-Sin,  the  son  of  Sargon,  may  safely  be  taken  as  a  working 
hypothesis.     Lehmann's  acute  suggestion  in  his  Zwei  Hauptprobleme  d. 
altorientalische  Chronologic,  p.  175  ff.  (Leipsig,  1898),  that  it  is  a  scribal 

165 


156  SEMITIC   ORIGINS 


the  oldest  picture  writing  is  at  least  a  thousand  years  older 
than  that,  and  a  previous  history  of  considerable  length  is 
required  for  the  development  of  this  system  of  writing. 

The  beginnings  of  agricultural  life  in  these  regions  can 
only  be  conjectured.  In  far-off  geologic  time  the  Persian 
Gulf  extended  far  up  toward  the  Mediterranean  Sea.1 
The  whole  valley  of  Mesopotamia  has  been  gradually 
formed,  and  in  recent  geologic  time  this  has  been  done 
largely  by  the  detritus  brought  down  by  the  rivers.  About 
seventy  feet  a  year2  is  added  to  the  land  in  this  way,  or  a 
mile  in  seventy  years.  Both  the  Tigris  and  Euphrates  have 
annual  periods  of  overflow  on  account  of  the  melting  of 
the  snow  in  the  mountains  of  Armenia  near  their  sources. 
The  Tigris  begins  to  rise  about  the  first  of  March,  and  the 
Euphrates  the  middle  of  March ;  the  water  of  the  former 
is  at  its  height  in  May  and  recedes  in  June  or  July,  while 
that  of  the  latter  rises  till  June,  and  not  till  September 
has  receded  to  its  ordinary  proportions.3  The  soil  has  thus 
been  formed  of  rich  materials,  and  the  retreating  flood 
leaves  it  each  year  pulverized  and  well  manured.  There 
is  a  considerable  rainfall  in  November  and  December,  and 

error  for  2200  is  based  largely  on  our  ignorance.  Peters  (PSBA.,  Vol. 
VIII,  p.  142)  suggested  that  it  was  a  round  number,  made  up  of  an  esti- 
mate of  eighty  generations  of  forty  years  each.  George  A.  Smith  (Modern 
Criticism  and  the  Preaching  of  the  Old  Testament,  p.  91,  n.)  holds  the 
same  view,  and  by  reducing  the  generation  to  thirty-three  years,  would 
fix  Naram-Sin's  date  at  3190  B.C.  The  excavations  now  going  on  in  the 
East  may  falsify  Lehmann's  view  any  day.  It  will  be  time  enough  to 
reduce  Nabo-nidos's  statement  when  more  of  the  mounds  have  been  forced 
to  relinquish  their  secrets,  and  it  has  been  demonstrated  that  the  gaps  in 
our  present  knowledge  cannot  be  filled.  Cf.  Rogers,  History  of  Babylonia 
and  Assyria,  p.  318  ff.  If  the  oldest  historical  inscription  is  4500  B.C.,  the 
Blau  Monuments  must  date  from  at  least  5000  B.C.,  and  probably  as  early 
as  5500  B.C.  The  E.  A.  Hoffman  tablet  and  Father  Schiel's  would  then 
seem  to  be  as  old  as  6000  B.C. 

1  See  the  map  in  Geology,  Chemical,  Physical,  and  Stratigraphical,  by 
Joseph  Prestwich,  Oxford,  Clarendon  Press,  1886-8. 

2  International  Geography,  p.  447. 

8  Rawlinson's  Ancient  Monarchies,  Vol.  I,  p.  12,  and  Jastrow's  Eeli- 
gion  of  Babylonia  and  Assyria,  p.  29. 


TRANSFORMATIONS  IN  BABYLONIA  157 

then  only  occasional  showers  till  May.  Wheat  and  barley, 
which  were  indigenous  to  this  region,  were  probably  culti- 
vated first  on  the  outskirts  of  the  inundation,  where  the 
soil  had  been  naturally  prepared  for  it.  The  rainy  season 
comes  on  just  in  time  to  give  the  grain  a  start  after  the 
river  floods  have  passed,  and  in  the  spring  the  harvest 
occurs  before  the  water  attains  its  height.  Here  the/ 
natural  conditions  combine  to  make  agriculture  easy,  and 
here  there  was  in  consequence  developed  one  of  the  oldest, 
if  not  the  very  oldest,  agricultural  communities  of  which 
there  is  any  record.  Payne  holds1  that  agriculture  is 
usually  developed  before  a  tribe  is  settled  in  the  most 
favorable  position  for  husbandry,  and  that  when  they  have 
outgrown  the  resources  of  the  spot  where  they  became 
agricultural  they  migrate  to  a  more  favorable  environment, 
where  an  opportunity  is  afforded  to  attain  a  higher  civili- 
zation and  enter  upon  a  grander  history.  It  is  perhaps 
the  case  that  this  is  true  of  the  originators  of  Babylonian 
agriculture,  but  there  have  been  so  many  changes  in 
Babylonia  that  we  cannot  now  speak  with  any  certainty 
on  this  point.  No  spot  more  suitable  for  the  beginnings  J 
of  an  agricultural  life  than  Babylonia  can  well  be  imagined.  I 
Wheat,  barley,  and  sesame  were  no  doubt  the  grains  first 
cultivated.  They  are  indigenous  to  the  region,  and  play 
an  important  role  in  the  many  Babylonian  contracts  and 
revenue  lists  which  have  come  down  to  us,  both  those  from 
the  dynasties  of  Ur,  about  2500  B.C.,2  and  the  numerous 
contracts  which  come  from  the  eighth  to  the  fifth  centuries 

1  History  of  America,  Vol.  II,  p.  61. 

2  For  instance  of  these  grains  see  CTBM.,  Pt.  I,  No.  Bu.  94-10-15,  4, 
1.  1 ;   Pt.  II,  No.  Bu.  91-5-9  2178  A,  1.  1 ;  Pt.  Ill,  No.  18343,  Col.  I,  1.  1 ; 
No.  16368,  obv.  1.  1 ;  Pt.  IV,  No.  Bu.  88-5-12,  504,  1. 1 ;  Pt.  VI,  Nos.  Bu. 
91-5-9,  476,  1.  l.and  91-5-9,  2421,  1.  1 ;  Pt.  VII,  Nos.  13166, 1.  1 ;  13318, 
1.  1 ;   18376,  1.  1 ;   18395,  1.  1 ;  18397  passim  ;  18403,  1.  1 ;   18409,  1.  1  ; 
18410,  1.   1 ;   18414,  1.  1  ;   18415,  1.  1 ;   18419,  1.   1 ;    Pt.  IX,  Nos.  21386 
passim  ;  17748, 1.  1 ;  20007, 1.  1 ;  Pt.  X,  14308,  rev.  Col.  VIII,  1. 1 ;  21381, 
rev.  1.  1 ;   18964  passim,   etc.,  the  tablets  published  and  translated  in 
Radau's  Early  Babylonian  History,  pp.  418-433,  also,  Reisner's  Tempel- 
urkunden  aus  Telloh,  Berlin,  1901,  pp.  16,  137. 


158  SEMITIC   ORIGINS 


B.C.1  These  were  always  the  most  abundant  grains ;  they 
figure  largely  in  the  payment  of  taxes  (which  were  often 
paid  in  kind)  and  are  among  the  most  frequent  subjects  of 
contract  between  individuals.  Still  earlier,  in  the  time  of 
Sargon  and  Naram-Sin  (3800-3700  B.C.),  Agade  was 
noted  for  its  perfect  grain,  and  the  grain  of  Agade  was  in 
demand  at  the  market  of  Shirpurla.2 

Along  with  these  grains  there  are  lists  of  cattle,  sheep, 
asses,  horns,  hides,  etc.,  which  were  given  in  payment  of 
taxes  to  the  temples  of  Shirpurla  and  Ur.3  Pasturage  was 
1 1  therefore  combined,  as  we  should  expect,  with  agriculture 
|  Jin  the  economic  life  of  ancient  Babylonia.  The  fertile 
valleys  which  led  out  from  the  great  valley  of  the  rivers 
were  admirably  adapted  to  pasturage.  Individual  property 
in  land  must  have  existed  here  several  thousand  years  ago. 
Estates  were  bought,  sold,  and  rented,  as  the  contract  tab- 
lets show,  as  early  as  2300  B.C.,4  and  we  have  a  plot  of  an 
estate  of  complicated  character  and  peculiar  shape,  which 
dates  from  the  fourth  millennium  before  our  era.5  An  un- 
published archaic  tablet  in  New  York,  which  probably 

1  As  an  example  of  the  evidence  from  the  latter  contracts,  see  the 
numerous   citations   made  to  the   Nabu-na'id    contracts  in  Tallquist's 
Sprache  der  Contracts  Nabu-na'ids,  pp.  130  and  138. 

2  Cf.  Thureau  Dangin's   Tablettes  chaldeennes  inedites,  Paris,   1897, 
Nos.  13,  1.  1 ;  29,  1.  1 ;  41,  1.  1 ;  43  passim,  and  p.  9  ff. 

8  Cf .  Thureau  Dangin's  Tablettes  chaldeennes  inedites,  Nos.  12  :  35,  55, 
rev.  1  and  70 ;  CTBM,  Pt.  I,  No.  Bu.  94-10-15,  5,  Col.  I,  11.  1  and  26, 
rev.  Col.  II,  1.  1;  94-10-16,  26,  rev.  Col.  II,  1.  6;  Pt.  V,  Nos.  12913 
passim;  18993  passim;  19024  passim ;  Pt.  VII,  Nos.  12938,  rev.  1.  13; 
12944  passim;  18383  passim;  18434,1.  11;  17766  passim;  12939,  Col. 
H,  1.  18;  12929  passim;  18382  passim;  Pt.  IX,  No.  19055  passim;  Pt. 
X,  Nos.  19064,  rev.  passim;  19772  passim,  etc.,  Radau,  Early  Baby- 
lonian History,  pp.  354-409,  where  several  tablets  of  the  same  character 
are  published  and  translated,  and  Reisner's  Tempelurkunden  aus  Telloh, 
pp.  24,  25,  26,  28,  30,  31,  33,  etc. 

*  See  the  references  in  Meissner's  Altababylonische  Privatrecht,  pp. 
9-11. 

6  Cf.  Oppert's  article,  "Un  cadastre  chalde"en  du  quatrieme  mile'nium 
avant  1'ere  chre"tienne"  in  the  Comptes  rendus  de  V Academic  des  Inscrip- 
tions et  Belle- Lettres,  4  me  ser,  Vol.  XXIV  (1896),  pp.  331  ff. ;  and  Thu- 
reau Dangin's  in  Revue  d' Assyriologie,  Vol.  IV,  p.  13  ff. 


TRANSFORMATIONS  IN  BABYLONIA  159 

dates  about  6000  B.C.,  presents  a  plot  of  ground  to  a  temple 
and  so  proves  that  individual  ownership  of  land  even  then 
existed.  . 

As  we  have  learned  in  the  preceding  pages,  the  structure  ;  i 
of  society  in  such  a  community  would  be  in  a  sense  patri-  >•= 
archal.    Kinship  would  naturally  be  reckoned  through  the 
father,  and  this  would  as  naturally  find  reflection  in  the 
religion  by  making  masculine  deities  prominent,  if  not  by 
placing  masculine  deities  at  the  head  of  the  pantheon. 

As  we  have  noted  above,1  the  date-palm  was  a  sacred 
tree  in  Babylonia,  but  whether  native  there  or  whether 
its  culture  was  imported  from  Arabia  has  been  a  moot 
point  among  scholars.2  At  present  the  palm  is  so  abun- 
dant in  lower  Mesopotamia  that  it  is  said  that  a  proper 
coat  of  arms  for  the  country  would  be  a  date-palm.3 
Dates  were,  during  the  period  from  which  most  of  our 
contract  tablets  come,  —  the  period  from  the  eighth  to  the 
fifth  centuries  before  our  era,  —  a  staple  article  of  diet 
and  of  commerce.4  We  have  not  as  yet  so  much  evidence 
of  their  commercial  use  at  an  earlier  period,  but  they  are 
mentioned  several  times  in  the  revenue  lists  of  Gamil-Sin, 
Bur-Sin,  and  other  kings  of  the  second  dynasty  of  Ur.6 
An  interesting  tablet  from  Telloh,  dating  from  the  time 
of  Naram-Sin  (about  3750  B.C.),  informs  us  that  twenty- 
six  and  one-half  shekels  of  "dates  of  Agade"  were  re- 
ceived at  the  city  of  Shirpurla.6  It  follows  that  dates 
were  cultivated  at  Agade  in  the  first  half  of  the  fourth 
millennium  B.O.  which  had  a  sufficient  reputation  to  be 

i  P.  90  ft. 

8  See  the  opinions  cited  above,  Chapter  II,  p.  75,  n.  4. 

•  Cf.  Zwemer's  Arabia,  the  Cradle  of  Islam,  p.  121. 

4  For  examples  of  the  abundant  references  in  the  contracts  of  this 
period,  cf.  Tallquist's  Sprache  der  Contracte  JVafcu-na'ids,  p.  111. 

6  Cf.  CTBM.,  Pt.  Ill,  No.  18958,  rev.  11.  18,  22 ;  Pt.  VII,  No.  17765 
passim;  Pt.  IX,  Nos.  17748,  Col.  II,  11.  10,  13;  19054  passim.  Palm 
tree  wood  is  also  mentioned,  Pt.  VII,  No.  18390,  1.  1. 

6  Cf.  Thureau  Dangin's  Tablettes  chaldeennes  inedites,  No.  48,  Col.  II, 
1.  4,  and  also  p.  9. 


160  SEMITIC  ORIGINS 


distinguished  from  the  dates  of  other  places.  That  dates 
were  highly  regarded  at  Shirpurla  is  further  proven  by 
the  fact  that  Entemena  Patesi  of  that  city,  who  lived 
about  4100  B.C.,  built  a  house  for  the  storage  of  dates,  — 
a  fact  of  sufficient  importance  to  be  mentioned  among  hia 
titles  to  fame.1  That  the  palm  was  known  long  before 
that  in  Babylonia  is  made  probable  by  the  presence  of 
a  sign  in  Babylonian  writing,  which  is  perhaps  derived 
from  the  palm  tree,  and  which  occurs  as  early  as  the 
inscription  of  Lugalzaggisi,  about  4000  B.C.,  in  a  very 
primitive  form.2  It  has  the  values  so^=damaqu="to 
favor,"  and  ^mmmar="palm  tree."  Delitzsch  holds8 
that  the  sign  is  composed  of  three  elements,  one  meaning 
"favor,"  one  "people,"  and  one  "open"  or  "bestow"; 
and  that  because  of  its  great  usefulness  the  palm  was 
designated  "  (the  tree  which)  is  full  of  favor  to  men." 
Ball  on  the  other  hand  considers  4  that  the  sign  is  derived 
from  the  application  of  the  cone-like  instrument  borne 
and  applied  to  the  tree,  by  the  winged  figures  in  the 
Babylonian  and  Assyrian  sculptures,  and  that  it  is  there- 
fore a  picture  of  the  fertilization  of  the  date-palm.  In 
this  case  the  idea  of  "favor"  (sa#)  would  become  con- 
nected with  the  sign  on  account  of  the  peculiarly  useful 
function  which  the  palm  performed  in  ancient  Babylonian 
life.  The  older  texts  give  the  sign  in  a  form  which  favors 
Delitzsch's  explanation  rather  than  Ball's.  This  harmo- 
nizes also  better  with  other  considerations  concerning  the 
culture  of  the  palm  in  Babylonia  which  we  will  now 

1  Cf.  CTBM.,  Pi.  X,  No.  86900, 1.  14.    The  line  reads  E-TUR-RA  KA- 
LUM-MA  MU-NA-RU,  "A  house  for  the  accumulation  (literally  'abyss,' 
Briinnow's  List,  No.  10220)  of  dates  he  built."     Cf.  also  Eev.  d'Assyr., 
Vol.  II,  148,  149 ;  De  Sarzec's  Decouvertes,  pi.  5,  bis  No.  1,  a ;  and  Radau, 
op.  cit.,  p.  113,  for  a  similar  expression. 

2  Cf.  OB/.,  No.  87,  Col.  Ill,  11.  30,  32,  and  Thureau  Dangin's  Becher- 
ches  sur  Vorigine  Vecriture  cnneiforme,  No.  137.      For  the  later  form 
and  meanings,  cf.  Briinnow's  List,  p.  305. 

8  Entstehung  der  dltesten  Schriftsystems,  oder  der  Ursprung  der  Keil- 
echriftzeichen,  Leipzig,  1897,  pp.  144,  145. 
«  Cf.  PSBA.,  Vol.  XVI,  p.  193. 


TRANSFORMATIONS   IN  BABYLONIA  161 

adduce.  We  accept  the  fact  of  the  presence  of  the  palm 
and  the  use  of  the  date  at  the  period  of  Sargon  and  Naram- 
Sin,  but  the  fact  should  be  noted  that  the  use  of  the  date 
and  the  culture  of  the  palm  does  not  seem  to  have  been 
general  at  that  time.  Of  course  the  fact  that  the  dates 
of  Agade  are  especially  mentioned  does  not  prove  that 
the  date  was  not  cultivated  elsewhere;  it  does,  however, 
prove  that  it  was  especially  cultivated  at  Agade,  whose 
kings  are  among  the  earliest  kings  to  write  in  Semitic. 
The  fact  that  a  king  of  Shirpurla  built  a  house  for  the 
accumulation  of  dates,  somewhat  as  another  built  one  for 
the  storage  of  cedar,1 — a  wood  of  foreign  origin  which 
had  to  be  brought  from  afar,  —  gives  some  ground  for  the 
supposition  that  the  fertilization  of  the  date-palm  so  as  to 
make  it  produce  more  abundantly  was  a  comparatively 
new  introduction  into  Babylonia,  and  perhaps  not  gen- 
erally adopted.2  It  is  probable,  as  Hehn  and  Fischer  con- 
tend, that  in  prehistoric  time  the  date-palm  extended  from 
the  Canaries  to  the  Penjab,8  and  its  presence  in  Bfrhyten** 
jn  about  6000  B.C.,  is  attested  by  its  occurrence  as  a  picto- 
graph  in  an  unpublished  text  in  the  E.  A.  Hoffman  collec- 
tion in  New  York,  translated  below,  p.  213,  n»  5,  but  it  by  no 
means  follows  that  the  artificial  fertilization  of  it  would  be- 
come everywhere  known  at  an  equally  early  date.4  Indeed, 

1  Cf.  an  inscription  of  Eannadu  (Eannatum"),  published  by  Thureau 
Dangin  in  Comptes  rendus  de  i' Academic  des  Inscriptions,  ,1899,  p.  348, 
PI.  II,  Col.  ii ;  also  the  translation  in  Radau's  Early  Babylonian  History, 
p.  72  ff. 

2  As  we  shall  see  below,  it  does  not  follow  that  artificial  fertilization 
of  the  date-palm  was  introduced  at  Agade  in  the  time  of  Sargon  into 
Babylonia  for  the  first  time,  but  only  that  a  strong  wave  of  Semitic  in- 
fluence and  Semitic  culture  helped  the  date  culture  of  Agade  at  that  time 
to  reach  a  point  of  preeminence  over  that  of  other  places. 

8  See  Hehn's  Culturpflanzen  und  Hausthiere,  6th  ed.,  p.  273;  and 
Fischer  in  Petermann's  Mittheilungen,  Ergangungsband  XIV,  No.  64, 
p.  11. 

*  The  fertilization  of  the  palm  in  Mesopotamia  is  still  performed  by 
hand.  The  tree  is  climbed  and  the  pollen  sprinkled  over  the  flowers. 
See  Zwemer's  Arabia,  the  Cradle  of  Islam,  p.  123. 


162  SEMITIC   OEIGINS 


we  should  expect  that,  in  an  agricultural  country  like  Baby- 
lonia, where  grain  was  indigenous  and  easily  cultivated, 
that  the  development  of  agriculture  would  remove  the 
spur  of  necessity  which  in  Arabia  compelled  men  to  re- 
sort to  artificial  fertilization  of  the  date-palm  to  support 
life.  This  view  is  confirmed  by  a  contract  of  the  fifth 
century  B.C.,  which  shows  that  the  process  of  getting  a 
date  orchard  started  in  Babylonia  was  so  expensive  that 
a  man  was  willing  to  forego  the  rent  of  the  land  for  sixty 
years  for  the  sake  of  having  it  done.1  These  general  con- 
siderations lead  us  to  believe  that  the  process  of  fertilizing 
the  date-palm  was  introduced  by  the  Semites  from  Arabia, 
and  that  Arabian  or  Semitic  civilization  was  characterized 
by  the  influences  of  the  date-palm  culture,  as  the  earliest 
civilization  of  Babylonia  was  characterized  by  the  more 
ordinary  agricultural  pursuits.  This  conclusion  involves 
the  consideration  of  some  knotty  problems  to  which  we 
must  soon  proceed,  and  it  will  be  found,  when  these  are 
considered,  that  several  other  considerations  will  confirm 
the  point  of  view  here  taken. 

In  such  an  agricultural  country  villages  grow  up  in 
protected  centres  where  fortification  is  possible  and  where 
it  is  accordingly  possible  to  protect  the  growing  crops 
from  the  forays  of  more  barbarous  tribes.  This  was  the 
case  in  Mexico  and  Peru,2  in  Egpyt,  and  was  also  no 
doubt  the  origin  of  the  Babylonian  cities.3  These  cities 
were  in  the  first  instance  the  residence  of  fellow-tribes- 
men and  were  built  around  the  temple  of  their  divinity 
of  fertility.  All  this  in  the  development  of  Babylonia 
lies  in  the  prehistoric  period.  In  that  period,  however, 
j  Nippur,  Eridu,  Ur,  Shirpurla,  Kutha,  Erech,  Agade,  and 
I  other  cities  had  sprung  into  existence.  Before  the  dawn 

1  Cf.  Hilprecht  and  Clay's  Business  Documents  of  Murashu  Sons  of 
Nippur,  No.  48.     Cf.  ibid.,  p.  36  ff.,  and  Assyrian  and  Babylonian  Liter- 
ature, N.  Y.,  Appleton,  1901,  p.  260  ff. 

2  Cf .  Payne's  History  of  America,  Vol.  II,  p.  47. 

8  See  Winckler's  Altorientalische  Forschungen,  Heft  III,  p.  232  ff. 


TRANSFORMATIONS   IN   BABYLONIA  163 

of  our  present  historical  knowledge,  about  4500  B.C.,  the 
struggle  between  these  cities  for  supremacy  had  not  only 
been  begun,  but  had  been  waged  with  such  varying  for- 
tunes that  now  one  city  had  been  supreme  in  power  over 
the  others  for  a  century  or  two,  and  now  another.  This 
struggle,  with  its  varied  results,  —  Shirpurla  being  in 
possession  of  empire  for  a  time,  then  Erech,  then  Agade, 
then  Erech,  Ur,  Isin,  Ur,  and  Larsa  in  succession,  —  con- 
tinued until  terminated  by  the  final  supremacy  of  Babylon, 
about  2300  B.C.1  As  will  appear  from  arguments  to  be 
adduced  later,  Nippur  must  have  held  the  supremacy  for 
a  long  time  during  the  prehistoric  period.  T^e  political 


combinations  which  resulted  produced  r*dicrimi|  y^«r«inam. 

The  city  which  was  fortunate  enough  to  win  the  leader- 
ship for  a  few  centuries  would  gain  a  high  position  for 
its  god  in  the  minds  of  the  inhabitants  of  the  subjugated 
cities,  and  the  city  which  was  sufficiently  fortunate  to 
gain  the  supremacy  first  and  to  hold  it  for  a  long  period 
would  win  for  its  god  the  distinction  of  being  the  head 
of  the  pantheon.  That  Ijippur  first  held  such  empire  the 
position  of  its  god  Enlil  (EeY)  indisputably  proves,  and  a 
few  fragments  of  archaic  inscriptions  attest.2  The  gods 
and  goddesses  of  the  other  cities  were  grouped  around 
him  as  sons  and  daughters  or  in  some  other  subordinate 
position.3  Enlil,  who  held  this  position  for  two  thousand 
years,  from  the  dawn  of  history  to  the  rise  of  Babylon, 
was  finally  displaced  by  Marduk,  the  god  of  the  latter 
city.  How  long  in  prehistoric  time  this  process  had 
been  going  on  we  can  only  estimate.  Our  task  is  ren- 

1  On  this  period  of  Babylonian  history  cf .  Meyer,  Geschichte  des  Alter- 
thums,  Vol.  I,  1884  ;  Tiele,  Babylonische-assyrisch  Geschichte,  1886-8  ; 
Miirdter-Delitzsch,  Geschichte  Babyloniens  und  Assyriens,  2d.  ed.,  1891  ; 
Winckler,  Geschichte  Babyloniens  und  Assyriens ;  McCurdy,  History, 
Prophecy,  and  the  Monuments,  1894  ;  Rogers,  Outlines  of  the  History  of 
Early  Babylonia,  1895 ;  Radau,  Early  Babylonian  History,  1900 ;  and 
Rogers,  History  of  Babylonia  and  Assyria,  Bk.  II. 

8  Cf.  OBI.,  Nos.  90-92,  94,  96,  and  111 ;  also  PI.  XVI. 

*  Cf.  Jastrow's  Religion  of  Babylonia  and  Assyria,  chs.  iii-vi. 


164 


SEMITIC  ORIGINS 


dered  difficult  by  the  fact  that  the  beginnings  which 
we  are  seeking  are  not  only,  as  in  other  cases,  shrouded 
in  prehistoric  darkness,  but  that  the  traces  of  them 
which  can  for  the  most  part  be  detected  in  other  parts 
of  the  Semitic  world  were  here  very  largely  swept 
away  before  the  dawn  of  history  by  political  and  re- 
ligious syncretism. 

The  difficulty  of  the  problem  is  increased  by  the  linguis- 
tic and  paleographic  phenomena.  As  is  well  known,  the 
cuneiform  inscriptions  contain  what  most  scholars  regard 
as  two  distinct  languages,  the  Sumerian  and  the  Semitic 
Babylonian.  It  is  generally  held  that  the  Sumerians 
invented  the  cuneiform  system  of  writing.  Halevy  first, 
in  1874,1  and  with  much  persistence  in  several  publica- 
tions since,2  has  maintained  that  the  so-called  Sumerian 
was  only  an  allographic  way  of  writing  Semitic,  and  that 
the  Semites  invented  the  cuneiform  system  of  writing. 
Guyard,3  McCurdy,4  Price,6  Jeremias,6  and  Thureau  Dan- 
gin  7  have  come  over  to  his  theory,  and  though  Delitzsch 
had  in  1889,8  in  1896,9  and  1897,10  he  had  returned  to 
his  former  Sumerian  point  of  view.  The  Sumerian  theory 
is  based  on  the  fact  that  there  exist  bilingual  syllabaries 

1  See  Journal  asiatique,  7th  ser.,  Vol.  Ill,  p.  461  fi. 

3  For  a  list  of  them  cf.  Weissbach's  Sumerische  Frage,  Leipzig,  1898, 
p.  25  ff.     Halfivy's  most  complete  grammatical  statement  of  his  point  of 
view  is  in  Actes  du  sixieme  Congres  International  des  Orientalistes,  Pts. 
I  and  II,  pp.  535-568.    His  latest  statement  is  contained  in  a  series  of 
articles  in  the  Revue  semitique  for  1900. 

8  Cf.  Revue  critique,  nouv.  ser.,  Vol.  IX  (1880),  p.  425  ff ;  and  Revue 
de  Vhistoire  des  religions,  Vol.  V,  pp.  252-278. 

4  Cf.  Presbyterian  and  Reformed  Review,  Vol.  II,  1891,  p.  58 ff.;  and 
History,  Prophecy,  and  the  Monuments,  Vol.  I,  pp.  87-95. 

6  Cf.  "  Accadians,"  in  Hastings's  Dictionary  of  the  Bible. 

6  Cf.  Chantepie  de  la  Saussaye's  Lehrbuch  der  Religionsgeschichte, 
Vol.  I,  p.  165  ff. 

7  Cf.  Revue  d'assyriologie,  Vol.  IV,  p.  73  ff. ;   Tablettes  chaldeennes 
inedites,  pp.  1-18. 

8  Cf.  his  Assyrian  Grammar,  pp.  61-71. 

9  Cf.  his  Assyrisches  Handworterbuch,  passim. 

10  Cf .  his  Entstehung  des  altcsten  Schriftsy  stems,  passim. 


TRANSFORMATIONS  IN  BABYLONIA  165 

and  word  lists,1  bilingual  hymns  and  prayers,2  bilingual 
inscriptions  of  kings,3  besides  many  unilingual  inscriptions 
in  both  languages.4  The  language  of  the  portion  ftf  fo^f* 
documents, called  Smnerian»  isheld  by  most  Assyriologists 
as  conclusive  evidence  of  the  existence  of  a  non-Semitic 
people,'  who  gavelnrth  to  the  Tangnage  and  invAntW|  fliA 
script.  Hallvy  contends  that  this  was  only  a  priestly 
method  of  writing  so  that  the  uninitiated  should  not  be 
able  to  read  it,  that  the  syllabic  values  are  all  of  Semitic 
derivation,6  and  that  the  Babylonian  syllabary  is  perfectly 
adapted  to  express  the  sounds  of  a  Semitic  language. 
Delitzsch  held,  in  1889,6  that  106  signs  were  demonstrably 
of  Semitic  derivation.  To  this  number  McCurdy  has 
added  about  forty  more.7  The  scholars  of  this  school 
also  urge,  that  the  fact  that  the  Semitic  inscriptions  occur 
side  by  side  with  the  Sumerian  back  to  3800  B.C.,  together 
with  the  fact  that  no  Sumerians  are  mentioned  in  the  his- 
torical inscriptions,  as  the  Elamites,  Kossaeans,  etc.,  are, 
is  evidence  that  no  such  people  existed. 

The  arguments  of  these  scholars  are  persuasive,  but  not 
quite  convincing.  We  may  grant  the  force  of  the  fact, 
that  such  texts  as  the  prayer  of  Samassumukin  8  is  in- 
fluenced by  Semitic  idiom,  and  that  a  number  of  Semitic 

1  See  for  example  those  published  in  II  R.,  and  in  CTBM.,  Pts.  XI 
and  XII. 

3  See  those  published  in  IV  R.,  and  in  Haupt's  ASKT.,  and  by  Reisner 
in  the  Mittheilungen  of  the  Berlin  Museum,  Heft  X.  Cf.  also  Zimmern's 
Babylonische  Busspsalmen. 

9  As,  for  example,  that  of  Khammurabi.     Cf.  KB.,  Vol.  IIP,  p.  llOff. 

*  The  many  royal  annals  of  the  Assyrian  kings  (KB.,  Vols.  I  and  II) 
may  be  cited  as  Semitic  examples,  while  those  of  the  kings  of  Shirpurla, 
published  in  De  Sarzec's  Decouvertes  en  Chaldee,  are  examples  of  the  Su- 
merian. 

6  See  Part  3  of  his  "Nouvelles  considerations  sur  le  syllabaire  cunei- 
forme,"  Journal  asiatique,  7th  ser.,  Vol.  VII,  p.  201  ff. 
9  Cf.  his  Assyrian  Grammar,  §  25. 
7  Cf.  Presbyterian  and  Ee formed  Review,  1891,  p.  58  ff. 

•  V  R.,  62,  No.  2,  and  Lehmann's  Samassumukin,  Tafeln  I  and  n. 
Cf.  Ft.  II,  p.  6  ff. 


166  SEMITIC  ORIGINS 


idioms  are  found  in  Sumerian  texts  even  back  to  the  oldest 
inscriptions,1  but  there  are  a  number  of  phenomena  which 
are  not  satisfactorily  explained  by  the  arguments  of  the 
Halevy  school.  No  satisfactory  Semitic  origin  has  as  yet 
been  proposed  for  a  considerable  number  of  the  oldest  and 
most  common  signs.2  The  way  in  which  Semitic  words 
have  to  be  torn  apart,  in  order  to  be  expressed  in  the 
cuneiform  script,  is  hardly  consistent  with  the  supposition 
that  it  was  the  invention  of  a  Semitic  people.  The  pecul- 
iar verb  prefixes  and  suffixes,  the  postpositions  instead  of 
prepositions,  and  the  various  phenomena  of  the  Sumerian 
grammar,  can  by  no  process  of  argumentation  be  made  to 
appear  the  phenomena  of  a  Semitic  language,  or  the  prob- 
able invention  of  a  Semitic  people.  There  are  not  want- 
ing, morever,  in  the  bilingual  texts  instances  in  which  the 
Semitic  idiom  is  so  peculiarly  modified  that  no  explana- 
tion of  it  seems  adequate,  except  that  it  has  resulted  from 
the  influence  of  the  idiom  of  the  foreign  language,  of 
which  it  is  a  translation.3  When  we  reflect,  too,  that 
most  of  the  oldest  inscriptions  are  written  in  what  Helevy 
calls  the  allographic,  or  hieratic  form,  we  are  not  only 
confronted  with  the  difficulty,  to  which  Radau  has  called 
attention4  (viz.,  that  the  existence  of  this  double  form  of 
writing,  as  early  as  3800  B.C.,  presupposes  an  incredibly 
long  anterior  cultural  development),  but  are  compelled  to 

1  Cf.  Hilprecht,  OBI.,  Pt.  II,  p.  65 ;  and  Radau,  Early  Babylonian 
History,  pp.  145-147. 

2  The  value  an,  for  example,  can  hardly  have  originated,  as  Delitzsch 
(Grammar,  p.  65)  would  have  it,  from  a  Semitic  source.    Nor  can  the 
following  be  assigned  to  a  Semitic  origin :  ud  (utu),  us,  sal,  *su,  pi,  du, 
ha,  nr,  kur,  gir,  bu,  and  many  others.    In  general,  the  signs  which  were 
originally  pictographs  have  values  which  cannot  be  explained  on  a  Se- 
mitic basis.     Cf .  my  Studies  in  the  Origin  and  Development  of  the  Cunei- 
form Syllabary,  in  preparation. 

8  Such,  for  example,  is  the  phrase,  i-sap-pu-ru-su-nu  =  "they  cry  out " 
(IV  R.,  1,  Col.  I.,  1.  15),  where  *su-nu  is,  contrary  to  Assyrian  idiom, 
the  subject  of  i-sap-pu-ru.  It  is  a  literal  translation  of  the  Sumerian 
G  U-BAL-BAL-A-MES,  which  stands  in  the  preceding  line. 

4  Early  Babylonian  History,  p.  148. 


TRANSFORMATIONS  IN  BABYLONIA  167 

suppose,  that  such  kings  as  Eannadu  and  Lugalzaggisi, 
who  wrote  inscriptions  to  perpetuate  their  fame,  chose  to 
have  them  written  in  a  form  which  only  a  few  could  under- 
stand. One  can  hardly  believe,  as  he  would  thus  be  com- 
pelled to  do,  that  the  French  bon  mot,  that  language  was 
invented  to  conceal  thought,  was  thus  anticipated  by  these 
kings  at  the  very  dawn  of  history. 

Radau's  view  1  is  the  one  which  my  own  studies  had  led 
me   to   adopt,  viz.,  that,   fop. 


Semitic  inhabitants  of  Babylonia,  that  they  invented  the 
cuneiform  system  of  writing,  but  that  the  Semites  had 
entered  Babylonia  and  conquered  them  before  the  dawn 
of  history.  The  situation  with  which  we  are  confronted 
in  early  Babylonia  is  not  altogether  unlike  that  which 
existed  in  Palestine  in  the  period  from  which  the  El- 
Amarna  tablets  come.  In  the  latter  country  the  Canaan- 
ites  had  their  own  language,  but  had  as  yet  no  method  of 
writing  it.  The  Babylonians  had  long  dominated  the 
country,  and  their  system  of  writing  was  well  known. 
To  express  themselves  in  written  form,  therefore,  the 
Canaanites  had  recourse  to  the  Babylonian  language  and 
script,  though  the  Babylonians  as  a  power  in  Palestine 
had  ceased  to  be  for  so  long  a  time  that  no  reference  is 
made  to  them  in  the  El-Amarna,  Palestinian  letters.  In 
thus  using  Babylonian  the  Canaanites  mingled  their  own 
idioms  with  those  of  the  foreign  tongue.2  Similarly, 
at  the  dawn  of  history  the  Semites  had  broken  the 
Sumerian  power  so  long  before  that  we  find  no  mention 
of  the  Sumerians  in  the  inscriptions  of  Babylonia,  though 
to  express  themselves  in  writing  the  Semites  were  at  first 
compelled  to  resort  to  the  Sumerian  language  and  script. 
In  using  these,  however,  they,  like  the  Canaanites,  mingled 
their  own  idioms.8  In  some  important  respects  there  is 

i  Ibid.,  p.  149. 

8  For  examples  see  my  article  "  A  Peculiar  Use  of  TZdni  in  the  Tablets 
from  El-Amarna"  in  PAOS.,  1892,  p.  cxcvi  ff.,  especially  p.  ccxix. 
8  See  the  references  given  above,  p.  166,  n.  1. 


168  SEMITIC  ORIGINS 


no  parallel  between  Babylonia  and  the  Palestine  of  the 
period  cited.  For  example,  in  Babylonia  the  Semites  who 
did  the  borrowing  were  the  invaders,  while  in  Palestine 
the  invaders  were  the  people  who  furnished  the  script; 
but  the  analogy  holds  for  the  important  point  to  which 
we  have  applied  it,  and  helps  us  to  understand  the  silence 
of  the  inscriptions  with  reference  to  the  Sumerians.1 

The  linguistic  may  be  reenforced  by  other  considera- 
tions. While  there  are  few  elements  of  the  Babylonian 
religion  which  cannot  be  explained  as  Semitic,  if  one  may 
be  permitted  to  draw  analogies  from  agricultural  Semites 
outside  of  Arabia,  yet  there  are  some  features  which  can- 
not be  so  explained.  For  example,  the  earl^  kings  jpf 
Babylonia  were  frequently  deified.  Even  in  their  lifetime 
their  names  were  written  with  the  determinative  for  deity 
before  them.  Naram-Sin  calls  himself  "god  of  Agade," 
and  votive  inscriptions  are  offered  to  other  kings  as  gods  ; 2 
while  Gudea  provided  that  certain  sacrifices  should  be 
offered,  apparently  to  his  statue,  which  was  erected  in  the 
temple  of  Ningirsu.3  Radau  has  tried  to  trace  the  growth 
of  this  custom,4  and  finds  it  incipient  in  the  inscription 
of  Lugalzaggisi,  full  grown  in  those  of  Sargon  of  Agade, 

1  The  arguments  for  the  existence  of  the  Sumerian  language  are  forci- 
bly stated  from  the  older  point  of  view  in  Haupt's  Die  sumerischen 
Familiengesetze,  1879  ;  "Ueber  einen  Dialekt  der  sumerischen  Sprache," 
in  Nachrichten  d.  K.  Gesell.  d.  Wiss.  zu  Gottingen,  1880,  pp.  513-542  ; 
and  ASKT.,  pp.  134-220 ;  Schrader's  "  Zur  Frage  nach  dem  Ursprung  der 
babylonischen  Kultur"  in  ZDMG.,  Vol.  XXIX  (1875),  pp.  1-52;  and 
Tiele's  Geschichte,  Vol.  I,  p.  68  fi.     For  more  recent  statements  of  the 
argument  see  Lehmann's  SamaSSumukin,  PL  I,  pp.  57  ff.,  107  ff.,  and 
Weissbach's   Sumerische  Frage,  p.    150  ff.     The  view  of  the  problem 
taken  in  the  text  supposes  that  the  Semites  began  to  use  the  cuneiform 
system  of  writing  at  a  time  so  early  that  they  exercised  a  large  influence 
on  its  later  development.     Thus  the  fact  that  the  syllabary  contains  a 
sign  for  Aleph  and  for  other  derivatives  from  sources  demonstrably 
Semitic  is  fully  accounted  for. 

2  Cf.  Radau,  Early  Babylonian  History,  pp.  164-166,  240,  n.  1,  247, 
250,  251,  and  308  ff. 

»Cf.  KB.,  Vol.  IIP,  p.  27. 
*  Op.  cit.,  p.  308  ff. 


TRANSFORMATIONS  IN  BABYLONIA 


16d 


and  most  flourishing  in  those  of  Naram-Sin,  though  it 
persisted  long  afterward,  as,  for  example,  in  the  inscrip- 
tions of  the  second  dynasty  of  Ur.  On  the  basis  of  these 
facts  he  builds  the  theory  that  it  was  a  point  of  view 
characteristic  of  the  Semites,  and  that  Sargon,  represent- 
ing a  Semitic  migration  from  Arabia,  had  revived  a 
Semitic  custom.1  To  argue  thus  is  to  erect  a  pyramid  on 
its  apex.  There  is  no  Semitic  analogy  elsewhere  for  the 
deification  of  kings,  either  during  their  lifetime  or  after- 
ward. All  we  know  of  the  culture  of  Arabia  affords  no 
basis  whatever  for  the  view  that  such  a  custom  could 
originate  there.  The  simple  life  of  the  desert  and  the 
oasis  threw  men  too  closely  together  for  even  a  sheik  to 
become  a  god  to  his  fellow-clansmen.  I£jbhere_is  a  reli- 
gious idea  which  we  can  pronounce  absolutely  un-Semitic 
itfis  this"^ TEufeau  Dangin  seems  to  recognize  this  when 
he  suggests  that  Egyptian  influence  led  to  the  deification 
of  themselves  on  the  part  of  Babylonian  kings.2  As  the 
empire  of  Naram-Sin  extended  to  Palestine,  he  thinks  con- 
tact with  Egypt  may  have  occurred  in  a  way  to  account 
for  the  introduction  of  this  practice.  Such  influence  is 
not  intrinsically  probable,  and  if  it  were,  one  wonders 
why  in  later  ages,  under  Kallima-Sin,  Burnaburiash,  Esar- 
haddon,  Assurbanipal,  and  Nebuchadnezzar,  when  contact 
with  Egypt  was  close  and  prolonged,  no  such  consequence 
of  Egyptian  influence  resulted.  In  fact,  such  influence  is 
inadequate  to  explain  the  phenomenon.  It  must  have) 
been  an  influence  local,  intimate,  an d  "prolonged,  an  influ- 1 
ence  from  a  non-Semitic  source,  bat  which  after  a  few/ 
centuries  failed  to  be  felt!  It  is  just  such  an  influence  as 
tKeTSumerian  must  have  been.  Radau  seems  to  think 
that  because  it  first  manifests  itself  fully  at  Agade  that  it 
cannot  be  Sumerian,8  but  do  we  know  enough  of  the 
habitat  of  these  prehistoric  people  to  be  sure  of  this?  I 

1  Op.  tit.,  p.  310. 

a  Cf.  Eeceuil  de  traveaux,  Vol.  XIX,  p.  187. 

«  Op.  cit.,  p.  309. 


170  SEMITIC   ORIGINS 


think  not.     Moreover,  evidence  will  be  adduced  below  to 
show  that  the  Sumerian  power  was  dominant  in  the  North 
I  rather  than  in  the  South.     The  presence  of  a  non-Semitic 
I  race  in  ancient  Babylonia  is  further  indicated  by  the  faces 
pictured  on  the  votive  tablet  of  Ur-Enlil  at  Nippur. l 
Professor   Cope   recognized   in  these   peculiar  faces   the 
Semitic  nose,  but  a  jaw  which  he  regarded  as  Aryan.2 

[He  thus  bears  witness  to  the  existence  of  a  hybrid  popu- 
lation in  this  region  at  the  dawn  of  history.  The  Blau 
Monuments,  which  are  still  older,  bear  witness,  as  Ward 
has  pointed  out,  to  the  presence  of  two  races  in  Babylonia.3 
This  is  all  we  desire.  We  must  confess  that  the  Mon- 
golian affinities  of  the  Sumerians  have  never  been  clearly 
proven.  It  is  enough  for  our  present  purpose  to  show 
that  there  was  a  mixture  of  races  in  Babylonia  at  this 
period,  and  to  agree  to  call  the  non-Semitic  portion  Su- 
merian until  such  time  as  we  can  obtain  a  better  name. 

Another  feature  of  the  civilization  of  Babylonia  points 
to  such  a  mixture  of  races.     The  decimal  system  of  num- 
bers  was  the  native  Hamito-Semitic  system.     Either  it  or 
H  the  quintal  system,  based  on  the  fingers  of  one  hand,4  is 

r  universally  present  among  the  Hamites  and  Semites,  and 
in  Babylonia  finally  prevailed  over  the  sexigesimal  system 
*.  A-         which  was  used  in  the  earlier  inscriptions.6     In  Babylonia 
the  day  and  night  were  divided  into  six  equal  parts6  —  a 


UVA. 


1  OBI.,  PI.  XVI. 

2  Cf.  OBL,  Ft.  II,  p.  48,  n.  1. 

8  See  American  Journal  of  Archaeology,  1st  ser.,  Pis.  IV  and  V,  and 
p.  40. 

4  McGee's  argument  (American  Anthropologist,  New  Series,  Vol.  I 
[1899],  pp.  646-674),  although  it  adduces  considerable  proof  in  favor  of 
the  influence  of  mythical  or  superstitious  ideas  in  giving  prominence  to 
certain  numbers,  really  offers  no  explanation  for  the  adoption  of  a  quintal 
or  decimal  system  of  numbers.  The  time-honored  suggestion  which  is 
repeated  in  the  text  therefore  seems  valid. 

6Cf.  the  article  "Number"  in  Encyc.  Bib.,  by  the  writer. 

6  See  the  interesting  astronomical  report  published  in  III  R.,  61,  which 
was  made  at  the  time  of  a  vernal  equinox.  It  reads:  "3d  day  of  the 
month  Nisan  ;  the  day  and  the  night  were  equal.  6  Kasbu  was  the  day  ; 


TRANSFORMATIONS   IN  BABYLONIA  171 

measurement  which,  as  Ihering  has  pointed  out,  cannot 
have  originated  with  a  people  who  knew  the  decimal  sys- 
tem.1 We  cannot  go  astray,  therefore,  in  attributing  the 
invention  of  this  system  of  numbers  to  the  Sumerians  who 
invented  also  the  cuneiform  system  of  writing. 

As  we  find  in  Babylonia  convincing  proof  of  the  exist- 
ence before  the  coming  of  the  Semites  of  a  non-Semitic 
people  who  possessed  a  high  degree  of  civilization,  and 
from  whom  the  Semites  borrowed  the  elements  of  their 
system  of  writing,  we  have  next  to  inquire  whether  there 
ia  any  test  which  we  can  apply  to  Babylonian  religiona 
institutions  wliich  will  enable  us  in  any  degree  to  distin- 
gnish  its  Semitic  from  its  Snmerian  elements.  We  have 
seen  that  the  characteristic  elements  of  primitive  Semitic 
religion  are  those  produced  in  the  desert  and  by  the  oasis 
culture  of  the  date-palm.  There  the  feminine  element  of 
society  held  a  most  important  place,  and  in  the  religion  it 
was  deified.  In  Babylonia,  on  the  other  hand,  the  eco- 
nomic conditions  were  such  that  agriculture  flourished 
from  time  immemorial.  A  fertile  and  almost  inexhaus- 
tible soil  yielded  its  riches  to  the  husbandman.  The  date- 
palm  grew  wild,  and  no  doubt  the  fruit  which  it  happened 
to  yield  was  gladly  used ;  but  in  all  probability  it  was  so 
easy  to  raise  grains  that  the  pressure  which  compelled  the 
Semite  in  Arabia  to  cultivate  the  date-palm  was  lacking 
in  Babylonia.  Fischer  is  probably  right  in  claiming  that 
its  culture,  in  the  proper  sense  of  that  term,  was  intro- 
duced from  Arabia.2  In  such  a  fertile  environment  every 
man  can  obtain  enough  to  support  a  wife,  especially  as  in 
early  communities  the  woman  performs  much  of  the  labor. 
Monogamy  is  in  such  communities  the  rule  for  the  com-  i 
mon  people,  while  polygamy  is  practised  by  the  rich,  of! 
whom  such  a  community  soon  produces  a  considerable!! 

6  Kasbu  was  the  night.  May  Nabu  and  Marduk  to  the  king  my  lord  be 
gracious  1 " 

1  See  Ihering's  Evolution  of  the  Aryan,  p.  121  ff. 

2  Cf.  Petermann's  Mttheilunyen,  Erganzungsband,  XIV,  No.  64,  p.  11. 


172  SEMITIC  ORIGINS 


number.1  If  now  we  can  determine  what  kind  of  a  reli- 
gion the  civilization  of  such  a  country  would  produce, 
some  light  will  be  thrown  upon  our  problem. 

In  search  of  an  analogy  which  will  supply  our  needed 
clew,  we  may  most  profitably  turn  to  the  civilizations  of 
ancient  Mexico  and  Peru, — two  countries  quite  isolated 
from  the  civilizations  of  the  Eastern  hemisphere  and  from 
each  other,  but  both  of  which  produced  civilizations  and 
religions  of  a  high  degree  of  organization.2 

Mexico  consists  of  an  elevated  tableland,  the  surface  of 
which  is  covered  with  lava  discharged  from  its  volcanic 
mountains,  and  of  detritus  which  the  storms  of  countless 
centuries  have  washed  down  from  its  lofty  ranges  and 
peaks.  For  the  most  part  it  has  few  rivers,  but  the  region 
around  the  city  of  Mexico  is  well  watered  and  contains 
many  lakes.3  The  water  supply  and  the  subtropical  cli- 
mate in  this  part  make  agriculture  easy.  Here  the  an- 
cient Mexican  tribes  developed  their  civilization.  In  its 
completed  form  it  was  of  a  mixed  character  with  Aztec 
elements  in  the  ascendency ;  but  in  its  earlier  phases 
simple  agricultural  communities,  especially  devoted  to  the 
worship  of  their  earth  goddesses,  or,  as  they  often  re- 
garded them,  maize  goddesses,  formed  the  earliest  nuclei.* 
These  earth  goddesses  were,  as  Payne6  has  pointed  out, 
especially  connected  in  their  development  with  agricul- 
ture. They  were  the  original  deities  of  the  Totoncas,  the 
Otomi,  and  the  Toltecs ;  and  also  of  the  Aztecs  in  their 


1  Cf .  Payne's  History  of  America,  Vol.  II,  pp.  13,  15. 

2  We  cannot  seek  the  analogy  which  we  desire  in  Egypt  because,  as 
we  have  seen,  the  religion  of  Egypt  has  back  of  it  some  elements  of  the 
oasis  civilization.     Nor  can  we  turn  to  India,  China,  or  Japan  with  any 
success  because  there  the  primitive  agricultural  religious  product  has  long 
been  displaced  by  more  philosophical  systems,  or  tortured  by  them  into 
unrecognizable  forms. 

*  The.  International  Geography,  p.  776. 

*  Cf.  Payne's  History  of  America,  Vol.  I,  pp.  462,  616,  620,  and  VoL 
II,  p.  480. 

*Cf.  Payne,  op.  cit.,  Vol.  I,  p.  618. 


TRANSFORMATIONS  IN  BABYLONIA  173 

primitive  northern  home  before  they  migrated  to  the  South 
and  became  conquerors.1 

The  civilization  resulting  from  this  Aztec  conquest  was 
in  many  respects  quite  advanced.     Property 


ized  for  the  nobles  on  a  hereditary  basis,  and  for  the  com- 
mon people  on  a  communal  basis.  Taxes  were  raised  in 
kind,  as  was  the  case  in  good  degree  in  Babylonia. 

Slaves,  as  in  the  latter  country,  did  the  laborious  work. 
Unlike  the  Babylonians,  the  Mexicans  had  no  beasts  of 
burden  and  did  not  know  the  use  of  iron  ;  only  gold,  silver, 
copper,  and  stone.2  There  were  good  markets  and  abun- 
dance of  wealth.  In  the  cities  associations  of  merchants 
exercised  great  political  influence.  As  in  Babylonia, 
polygamy  was  p^^ti^ri  by  the  rich  and  by  kings.  The 
Aztec  emperor  is  said  to  have  had  a  thousand  wives.3 

In  certain  respects  the  resulting  Aztec  religion  resem- 
bled the  Babylonian.  The  assimilation  of  conquered 
tribes  with  the  conquerors  created  religious  syncretism, 
and  led  to  the  formation  of  a  pantheon.  The  form  of 
their  temple,  though  much  broader,  bears  considerable 
resemblance  to  a  Babylonian  ziggurat.4  The  Aztecs,  too, 
like  the  Semites,  thought  that  sacrifice  united  the  wor- 
shipper to  his  god.6  At  the  time  when  Europeans  came 
into  contact  with  the  Aztecs,  tribe  had  conquered  tribe 
till  much  religious  syncretism  had  resulted,  a  pantheon 
had  been  organized,  and  as  in  Babylonia  the  functions  of 
the  various  gods"  had  been  much  specialized.  The  heads 

1  Cf.  Payne,  ibid,,  p.  520.  For  the  Otomi,  cf.  Payne,  op.  cit.,  Vol.  II, 
p.  454  ff. 

2Cf.  The  Native  Religions  of  Mexico  and  Peru,  Hibbert  Lectures, 
1884,  by  Albert  Rfiville,  2d  ed.,  London,  1895,  pp.  32,  33. 

8  Mexico,  Aztec,  Spanish,  and  Republican,  by  Brantz  Mayer,  Hart- 
ford, 1853,  Vol.  I,  p.  36. 

*  Cf.  The  History  of  Mexico  and  its  Wars,  by  John  Frost,  New  Or- 
leans, 1882,  Vol.  II,  p.  40;  Brantz  Mayer,  op.  cit.,  Vol.  I,  p.  37,  and 
Perrot  and  Chipiez,  Histoire  de  Vart  en  Chaldee  et  Assyrie,  Vol.  II,  p. 
403  ff. 

6  Cf.  Rfiville,  op.  cit.,  p.  89,  and  W.  R.  Smith's  Religion  of  the  Semites, 
Lect.,  VI-IX. 


174  SEMITIC   ORIGINS 


of  the  pantheon  were  identified  with  the  sun  and  moon, 
and  were  called  grandfather  and  grandmother.1  These 
were  in  theory  the  chief  deities,  but  in  practice  those  were 
worshipped  more  which  stood  nearer  the  interests  of  every- 
day life.2  There  was  a  wind  god,  usually  pictured  under 
the  form  of  a  serpent,3  a  form  which  had  survived  from  a 
previous  condition  of  totemism.  Tlaloc  was  the  god  of 
rain  —  the  god  of  fecundity  to  whom  many  children  were 
sacrificed.4  Tlazolteotl  was  the  goddess  of  love  and 
sensuality.  Originally  the  wife  of  Tlaloc,  the  rain  god, 
the  sun  had  stolen  her  away.6  Centeotl  was  the  goddess 
of  the  maize ;  she  had  a  son  who  bore  the  same  name  as 
herself.  She  was  often  represented  with  this  son  as  a 
child  in  her  arms,  and  reminded  the  Spaniards  of  the  Ma- 
donna and  the  child  Jesus.6  In  addition  to  these  princi- 
pal deities  they  also  had  little  household  gods  somewhat 
like  the  Hebrew  teraphim.7 

It  will  be  noted  from  this  brief  description  that  the  re- 
sulting Mexican  civilization  possessed  both  gods  and  god- 
desses as  did  the  Babylonian,  and  that,  as  in  the  latter 
country,  these  were  arranged  in  pairs.  The  goddesses  who 
had  survived  from  the  more  primitive  period  were  not, 
however,  supreme,  but  were  subordinate  to  the  gods.  There 
is  a  story  to  the  effect  that  Tlazolteotl,  the  goddess  of  sen- 
suality, prevailed  over  the  pious  hermit  Yappan  when  he 
had  resisted  all  other  temptations,8  as  Ukhat  prevailed 
over  Eabani;9  but  Tlazolteotl  was  herself  subject  to  her 
divine  husband,  and  was  not  supreme  as  was  Ishtar. 

The  conception  of  the  relation  between  gods  and  god- 
desses is  reflected  in  the  procedure  connected  with  their 
great_annual  human  sacrifice.  The  man  chosen  for  this 
sacrifice  was  treated  foTa  year  previous  to  its  occurrence 

1R6ville,  op.  cit.,  p.  35.  6R6ville,  op.  cit.,  p.  76. 

2  Rfiville,  op.  cit.,  p.  68.  8  R6ville,  ibid.,  p.  73. 

8  Cf.  Rfiville,  op.  cit.,  pp.  38,  68.  7  Rfiville,  ibid.,  p.  77. 

*  Rfrnlle,  op.  cit.,  p.  71.  "Rgville,  ibid.,  p.  76. 

9  See  above,  p.  83. 


TRANSFORMATIONS   IN  BABYLONIA  175 

with  divine  honors.  For  at  least  a  month  before  the  sacri- 
fice took  place  four  beautiful  girls  were  given  him  to  share 
his  bed,  and  he  passed  his  time  in  dalliance  with  these 
until  the  day  of  the  sacrifice  came  around.1  It  thus  ap- 
pears that  the  chief  deity  to  whom  this  sacrifice  was  offered 
was  conceived  as  a  polygamous  god,  the  possessor  of  a 
harem  of  goddesses. 

The  story  of  the  seduction  of  Yappan  bears,  therefore, 
only  a  superficial  resemblance  to  the  story  of  Eabani. 
There  is  no  trace  among  the  Aztecs  of  a  general  worship 
of  deified  polyandry  or  unwedded  love  as  among  the  Sem- 
ites. The  deep  impress  which  the  Ishtar  cult  left  upon 
Semitic  religious  life  has  no  parallel  among  the  Aztecs. 
Their  culture  was  the  product  of  agriculture  and  conquest 
and  not  the  culture  of  the  oasis.  Men  had  long  been  the 
head  of  the  family,  and  gods  were  at  the  head  of  their  pan- 
theon. The  feminine  element  entered  into  their  religious, 
as  into  their  social  life  under  the  conceptions  of  a  polyg- 
amous, and  not  of  a  polyandrous  social  order.  The  god- 
desses may  have  been,  and  probably  were,  supreme  in  the 
earlier  days  of  the  tribal  life,  but  the  conditions  of  the 
country  made  the  agricultural  tribes  an  early  prey  to 
other  clans.  Wars  and  conquests  followed,  producing 
clans  in  which  the  virile  elements  of  manhood  were  ideal- 
ized, and  in  which  gods  soon  became  supreme.  This 
happened  so  soon  that  the  earth  goddesses  never  gained, 
as  in  Arabia,  where  the  environment  made  outside  influ- 
ences impossible  and  the  deserts  made  the  oasis  type  of 
life  predominant  over  everything,  a  character  sufficiently 
permanent  to  meet  the  shock  of  mixture  and  to  survive 
and  absorb  it. 

In  Peru  a  similar  history  can  be  traced.  In  the  basin 
of  Lake  Titicaca  tribes  known  as  the  Colla2  worshipped 

1  Cf.  History  of  the  Conquest  of  Mexico,  by  William  Prescott,  Boston, 
1858,  Vol.  I,  p.  79  ;  Frost's  History  of  Mexico  and  its  Wars,  Vol.  I,  p.  42  ;  and 
Brantz  Mayer's  Mexico,  Aztec,  Spanish,  and  Republican,  Vol.  I,  pp.  39,  40. 

2  Cf.  Payne's  History  of  America,  Vol.  I,  p.  324. 


176  SEMITIC   ORIGINS 


as  a  mother,  some  of  them  the  earth,  and  some  the 
lake,1  while  the  Yuncas  or  Yuncapata  of  the  Pacific 
coast  thus  regarded  the  ocean.2  The  dominant  race 
who  produced  Peruvian  civilization,  the  Amyara  and 
Quichua,  whose  original  home  seems  to  have  been  in  the 
mountainous  regions  of  what  we  call  Bolivia  and  Argen- 
tina, came  thither  and  conquered  the  country.3  Like 
some  other  tribes,*  the  Incas  were,  in  later  times  at  least, 
worshippers  of  the  sun.  They  conquered  the  coast  lands 
also,  and  developed  a  high  degree  of  civilization.  Reli- 
gious syncretism  and  a  pantheon  followed.  Their  social 
order  was  definitely  organized.  Their  lands  were  divided 
into  the  lands  of  the  sun,  which  supported  the  temple  and 
priesthood,  the  lands  of  the  Inca,  which  supported  the 
king,  and  the  lands  of  the  people.  The  latter  were  divided 
among  them  per  capita.6  The  priesthood  was  highly 
organized  and  numbered  about  four  thousand.6  The  usual 
features  of  agricultural  social  life  present  themselves  in 
their  organization.  The  common  people  were  monogamous, 
and  were  not  allowed  to  marry  one  from  beyond  the 
bounds  of  their  own  community.7  The  nobles  were  polyg- 
amous, while  the  Incas  or  sovereigns  were  extravagantly 
polygamous.  Honors  practically  divine  were  accorded 
the  Incas.  One  of  the  most  striking  features  of  the  social 
organization  were  Homes  of  the  Selected,  a  kind  of  nun- 
nery, where  several  hundred  virgins  were  congregated, 
and  their  chastity  protected  by  the  most  stringent  regula- 
tions. These  were  destined  to  be  the  Inca's  wives,  or,  if  the 
Inca  chose,  the  wives  of  some  of  his  nobles,  or  at  times  for 
sacrifice  to  the  sun.  When  he  for  any  reason  discarded 
one  after  she  had  been  destined  for  sacrifice,  or  after  she 

1  Cf.  Payne,  op.  cit.,  pp.  603-509. 

2  Cf.  Payne,  ibid.,  pp.  376,  602  ff.,  also  Vol.  II,  p.  555  ff. 

•  Cf.  Payne,  op.  cit.,  Vol.  II,  p.  560  ff. 

*  Cf.  Payne,  op.  cit.,  Vol.  I,  pp.  560,  561. 

6  Cf.  Prescott,  Conquest  of  Peru,  Vol.  I,  pp.  47-50. 

6  Prescott,  ibid.,  p.  101. 

7  Prescott,  ibid.,  p.  112. 


TRANSFORMATIONS  IN  BABYLONIA  177 

had  been  taken  to  his  palace  and  had  lived  with  him  for  a 
time,  she  returned  to  her  native  village.1  Like  the  Sem- 
ites, they  sacrificed  only  edible  animals  to  their  gods,2 
regarded  sacrifice  as  commensal,  and  concluded  their 
feasts  with  music  and  drinking.8  Like  the  Semites,  too, 
they  had  passed  through  a  totemistic  stage  of  develop- 
ment before  they  reached  the  point  of  civilization  which 
has  been  described.4 

At  the  time  of  the  Spanish  conquest,  when  Europeans 
came  in  contact  with  the  empire  of  the  Incas,  that  race  had 
subjugated  other  tribes,  and  welded  them  into  a  complete 
organization  with  its  resulting  pantheon.  In  this  pan- 
theon the  sun  god  stood  at  the  head,  with  his  sister  and 
consort,  the  moon  goddess.6  Virachoca,  a  lake  or  rain 
god,  was  also  worshipped  with  his  sister  Choca.6  These 
deities  were  older  than  the  sun  deities,  as  their  myths 
show.7  They  were  survivals  from  the  more  primitive 
social  organization.  Pochacoma,  the  animator  of  the 
earth  (a  kind  of  Dionysos),  also  held  a  conspicuous  place.8 
Cuycha,  the  god  of  the  rainbow,  and  Chasca,  a  male 
Venus,  were  also  worshipped  as  attendants  of  the  sun.9 

In  the  religion  of  Peru,  then,  we  find  a  course  of  develop- 
ment quite  similar  to  that  of  Mexico.  The  primitive  god- 
desses were  retained,  but  in  the  religious  syncretism  of 

1  Prescott,  op.  cit.,  Vol.  I,  pp.  109-112  ;  Rfiville,  op.  cit.,  pp.  204-208  ; 
and  Payne,  History  of  America,  Vol.  I,  p.  564  ff. 

*  R6ville,  op.  cit.,  p.  219. 
8  Prescott,  ibid.,  p.  107. 

*  Cf.  Prescott,  ibid.,  p.  93  ;  Rgville,  op.  cit.,  p.  198 ;  Histoire  des  Tncas, 
rois  du  Peru,  par  Jean  Baudoin,  Amsterdam,  1766,  pp.  39  ff.,  41  ff.;  and 
Payne's  History  of  America,  Vol.  I,  p.  445  ff. 

6  Reville,  op.  cit.,  pp.  153,  164 ;  Prescott,  op.  cit.,  p.  93  ;  and  Baudoin, 
op.  cit.,  p.  80  ff. 

6  Note  that  the  extreme  practice  of  endogamy  in  Peru,  similar  to  that 
of  the  royal  family  of  Egypt,  had  projected  itself  into  their  conception  of 
the  gods,  so  that  the  celestials  also  married  their  sisters. 

*  Reville,  ibid.,  pp.  185-188. 

8  Cf.  Prescott,  op.  cit.,  p.  91,  and  Reville,  op.  cit.,  p.  189  ff. 

*  Prescott,  ibid.,  p.  92,  and  Rfiville,  ibid.,  p.  194. 

H 


178  SEMITIC   ORIGINS 


the  Inca's  empire  were  subordinated  even  more  than  in 
Mexico  to  male  deities.  This,  as  in  Mexico,  was  no  doubt 
due  in  part  to  early  conquests  of  the  peoples  who 
worshipped  the  earth  as  a  mother  goddess,  before  that 
worship  became  so  fixed  by  long  practice  as  to  be  able  to 
withstand,  as  the  Semitic  cultus  of  primitive  times  did,  a 
good  proportion  of  this  absorbing  power. 

If  we  turn  to  the  gods  and  goddesses Lof ^j,ncignt^Greece,  we 
find  similar  beginnings  and  a  similar  result.  The  various 
waves  of  races  and  of  conquest  which  swept  over  Greece 
finally  left  its  pantheon  a  mixture,  in  which  the  male  ele- 
ment predominated.  There  are  not  wanting,  however,  evi- 
dences that  at  the  beginnings  of  its  agricultural  life  many 
goddesses  of  mother  earth  were  worshipped.  The  most 
obvious  of  these  is  Demeter,  whose  name  probably  meant 
originally  "Earth-mother";  but,  as  Farnell  has  shown, 
Artemis  was  such  a  goddess  among  the  Greeks  of  Asia 
Minor,1  Hecate  in  JEgina,2  and  Athena  at  one  time  at 
Athens.3  In  the  civilization  which  resulted  from  later 
mixtures  these  goddesses  lost  their  supremacy,  with  the 
exception  of  Artemis,  who  in  Asiatic  cities  like  Ephesus 
maintained  her  position,  though  under  a  somewhat  trans- 
formed character,  till  a  comparatively  late  time. 

There  is  some  evidence  that  a  similar  history  was 
enacted  in  connection  with  t^pajitheon^of^^Rome.  Maia 
seems  to  have  been  an  earth-mother  goddess,  whose  cult 
was  in  a  way  maintained  down  to  the  latest  times,4  but 
Rome  became  such  a  warlike  power  that  the  virile  gods  of 
battle  almost  eclipsed  in  the  historical  period  this  primi- 
tive goddess. 

A  similar  history  can  in  all  probability  be  traced  in  the 
Teutonic  pantheon.5 

1  See  Farnell's  Cults  of  the  Greek  States,  Vol.  II,  p.  464  ff. 

3  Farnell,  op.  cit.,  Vol.  II,  p.  507. 

'Farnell,  op.  cit.,  Vol.  I,  p.  289. 

*  Macrobius,  Saturnalia,  I,  12. 

6  Cf.  Gummere's  Germanic  Origins,  New  York,  1892,  ch.  xiv. 


TRANSFORMATIONS  IN  BABYLONIA  179 

From  such  examples  as  these  the  following  conclusions 
may  be  fairly  drawn.     Where  the  beginnings  of  ag.ricu.l-j 
ture  are  possible  men  naturally  worship  goddesses  which  | 
they  connect  with  the  earth,  or  a  lake,  or  some 


which  is  conceived  as  the  giver  of  fertility.1  In  all 
probability  as  long  as  such  communities  remained  peace- 
ful such  goddesses  continued  to  be  supreme,  but  when 
other  tribes  or  clans,  attracted  by  their  prosperity  began 
to  conquer  them,  all  soon  became  changed.  These  attack- 
ing clans  were  in  some  cases  pastoral,  and  consequently 
patriarchal  and  worshippers  of  gods  rather  than  god- 
desses ;  in  other  cases  they  were  clans  organized  on  the 
republican  basis  for  hazardous  undertakings  and  therefore 
worshippers  of  virility.  If  they  had  been  agricultural 
communities  and  worshippers  of  goddesses,  warlike  habits 
in  many  cases  changed  these  into  gods.  In  the  struggles 
which  followed  the  strong  powers  of  the  warrior  would  in 
time  become  idealized  by  all  as  the  chief  powers  of  the 
leading  deity,  and  the  old  goddesses  when  retained  would 
take  a  subordinate  position. 

In  an  oasis  country  like  Arabia  the  conditions  were 
somewhat  different.  The  direct  dependence  of  all  upon 
the  oasis  and  the  mother  goddesses  of  these  fertile  spots 
would  keep  even  the  republican  clans,  organized  for  the 
caravan  trade,  largely  dependent  upon,  and  worshippers 
of,  the  mother  goddesses.  The  natural  barriers  of  the 
peninsula  protected  the  clans  from  outside  influences  and 
attacks,  so  that  here  even  in  the  midst  of  long  struggles 
between  clan  and  clan  for  supremacy  the  goddess  could 
maintain  her  position.  We  have  a  right  therefore  to  ex- 
pect that  when  the  Semites  went  forth  in  hordes  from 
Arabia  into  other  lands  their  mother  goddesses  would 
present  much  more  fixity  of  character  than  the  mother 
goddesses  of  ordinary  agricultural  communities  such  as 
the  Sumerians  of  Babylonia  were.  The  peculiar  emphasis 

1  This  is  no  doubt  the  origin  of  the  "  corn  spirit  "  which  Frazer  traces 
through  so  many  countries.  Cf.  Golden  Bough,  Vol.  II,  passim. 


180  SEMITIC   ORIGINS 


which  the  deification  of  the  palm  tree  led  them  to  place 
upon  sexual  functions  also  gives  a  Semitic  goddess  a 
character  quite  peculiarly  her  own.  In  the  fragmentary 
information  which  has  come  down  to  us  we  may  not 
always  be  able  to  distinguish  these  characteristics,  but 
where  our  information  is  full  the  task  is  not  difficult. 

In  applying  these  principles  to  the^gpds  of  Babyjpnia 
we  are  met  by  another  difficulty.  Were  the  Sumerian 
communities  always  peaceful  and  their  goddesses  conse- 
quently left  in  supremacy  until  the  Semites  invaded  the 
country  and  the  struggle  with  them  began  ?  The  answer  is 
not  easy,  as  it  lies  altogether  in  prehistoric  time,  but  the 
probabilities  are  all  in  favor  of  a  negative  answer.  From 
the  mountains  and  high  lands  on  either  side  of  the  Mesopo- 
tamian  valley  pastoral  or  unsettled  clans  must  have  poured 
themselves  into  the  lower  and  more  fertile  lands  of  the 
agricultural  portions  from  the  time  when  the  Sumerians 
made  their  first  settlements.  At  the  very  dawn  of  history 
Eannadu  and  the  kings  of  Kish  had  frequently  fought  and 
conquered  the  Elamites,1  Eannadu  boasting  that  he  had 
driven  them  back  to  their  mountain,  and  we  have  no  means 
of  knowing  how  many  struggles  between  Babylonians  and 
Elamites  may  have  preceded.  In  all  probability  such  wars 
had  been  going  on  for  generations  before  the  Semitic  ad- 
vent, and  had  as  in  Mexico,  Peru,  Greece,  Rome,  and  else- 
where transformed  or  subordinated  the  Sumerian  goddesses. 
If  then  we  can  find  in  Babylonia  gods  of  tribes  or  cities 
whose  masculine  character  seems  to  have  been  fully  estab- 
lished before  the  dawn  of  history  and  whose  traits  seem  to 
have  no  organic  connection  with  Ishtar  or  Athtar,  we  may 
conclude  that  such  deities  are  Sumerian.  If,  on  the  other 
hand,  we  find  cities  where  goddesses  are  supreme  and  where 
the  peculiar  sexual  features  which  were  developed  in  Arabia 

1Cf.  Revue  d.  asst/r.,  Vol.  IV,  pi.  1,  col.  iii  and  col.  v;  also  Radau, 
Early  Babylonian  History,  pp.  85  and  91 ;  de  Sarzec's  Decouvertes,  pi.  31, 
No.  2,  a  and  b,  col.  iii,  and  Radau,  op.  cit.,  p.  94 ;  also  CTBM.,  Pt.  IX, 
pi.  1  and  2 ;  Hilprecht,  OBL,  No.  5,  and  Radan,  op.  cit.,  p.  128. 


TRANSFORMATIONS  IN  BABYLONIA  181 

are  present,  or  goddesses  connected  with  the  culture  of  the 
date-palm,  or  gods  developed  out  of  goddesses  which  were 
so  connected,  we  may  hold  that  the  dominant  element  of 
such  civilization  was  Semitic. 

In  applying  this  test  it  will  be  most  convenient  to  begin 
with  an  old  Babylonian  kingdom,  which  has  been  brought 
to  light  by  the  researches  of  recent  years,  tke  .kingdom  of 
Kigh.  True,  scholars  have  wavered  as  to  whether  it  was 
really  a  kingdom,1  but  the  fact  that  the  name  is  followed 
by  the  determinative  for  place  when  spoken  of  by  those 
outside  its  limits,2  seems  to  settle  the  matter.  This  city 
or  region  appears  to  have  been  situated  east  of  Babylon 
and  north  of  Shirpurla  on  the  Tigris  River  in  northern 
Babylonia.8  It  is  the  first  of  the  Babylonian  states  whose 
kings  wrote  their  inscriptions  in  Semitic  Babylonian,  and 
thereby  reveal  their  Semitic  origin.4  One  of  the  early 
kings  of  Kish  has  left  a  votive  inscription  hitherto  mis- 
understood, which  proves  for  the  kingdom  of  Kish  a 
development  of  the  Ishtar  cult  similar  to  that  which  we 
have  already  proven  by  monumental  evidence  for  south 
Arabia.6  This  inscription  reads  :  — 

1.  "  For  the  king  of  countries, 

2.  Nana,  (Ishtar)  ; 

3.  For  the  lady,  Nana,  (Ishtar), 

4.  Lugal-tarsi, 

5.  king  of  Kish, 

6.  the  structure  of  a  terrace 

7.  has  made."6 

1  Cf.  Winckler's  Altorientalische  Forschungen,  1st  ser.,  p.  144,  and 
Hilprecht,  OBI.,  p.  270  (pt.  2,  p.  56). 

1  Cf.  Radau's  Early  Babylonian  History,  p.  126. 

»Cf.  Radau,  op.  cit.,  p.  112. 

«Cf.  Hilprecht,  OBL,  Nos.  5-10,  and  Scheil's  Textes,  ilamites- 
simitiques.  Paris,  1900. 

6  See  above,  Chapter  IV. 

•  This  inscription  is  published  in  CTBM.,  Pt.  Ill,  pi.  1,  No.  12155.  In 
Sumerian  it  reads:  (1)  Dingir  LUGAL-RA  KUR-KUR ;  (2)  dingir 


182  SEMITIC   ORIGINS 


In  this  inscription  the  name  of  the  deity  both  in  line  2, 
where  it  is  in  apposition  with  "king,"  and  is  consequently 
masculine,  and  in  line  3,  where  the  fact  that  it  is  preceded 
by  the  word  "  lady  "  proves  it  to  be  feminine,  is  expressed 
by  the  sign,  which  is  employed  as  the  ideogram  for  the 
name  of  the  goddess  Ishtar,1  as  the  syllabaries  and  bi- 
lingual hymns  testify,  but  which  scholars  are  accustomed 
to  read  in  Sumerian  texts,  "Nana"  or  "Ninnai." 

It  is  clear  from  the  argument  in  the  first  three  chapters 
of  this  work  that  the  name  Ishtar  was  no  late  invention  of 
the  Semitic  peoples,  but  had  its  origin  in  primitive  Semitic 
life.  In  all  probability,  therefore,  it  was  carried  by  the 
Semites  with  them  to  Babylonia,  as  well  as  to  the  other 
countries  whither  they  went.  As  the  people  of  Kish  were 
Semitic,  it  was  no  doubt  their  name  for  the  goddess,2  and 

NANA;  (3)  NIN  dingir  NANA-RA  ;  (4)  LUGAL-TAR-SI ;  (5) 
LUGAL  KISH ;  (6)  GIR  KISAL  ;  (7)  MU-NA-RU.  Thureau  Dangin 
translates  (Bev.  cT assyriologie,  Vol.  IV,  p.  74,  n.  15,  and  Tablettes 
chaldeennes  inedites,  p.  6,  n.  15),  "En  1'honneur  du  dieu  centimes  et 
de  Ishtar,  de  la  dame  Ishtar,"  etc.  Radau  (op.  cit.,  p.  125,  n.  3)  would 
render:  "In  honor  of  the  god  of  countries  and  of  Ishtar,  the  mistress 
of  the  divine  Innanna,"  etc.  I  believe  both  to  have  missed  the  signi- 
ficance of  the  inscription  as  to  the  history  of  the  development  of 
religious  conceptions.  Cf.  my  paper,  "  An  Androgynous  Baby- 
lonian Divinity,"  in  JAOS.,  Vol.  XXI2,  p.  185  ff.  Radau's  reading 
"  Innanna  "  is  based  on  Thureau  Dangin's  translation  in  Bev.  semitique, 
Vol.  V,  p.  67  ff.,  of  Eannadu's  Galet  A,  of  col.  ii,  1.  5.  Thureau 
Dangin  translates  the  sign  for  Ishtar  "  Inanna  "  there  because  in  col.  v, 
1.  26,  he  had  been  unable  to  render  it  otherwise.  Upon  reference  to  the 
original  publication  in  Eev.  (T assyriologie,  Vol.  IV,  pi.  1,  it  is  found,  as  I 
have  pointed  out  in  the  paper  referred  to  above,  that  it  may  equally  well 
be  read  in  both  passages  "Ishtar"  instead  of  "Inanna."  Even  if  the 
inscription  was  deposited  by  the  king  at  a  temple  in  Shirpurla,  it  vouches 
for  the  conceptions  prevalent  in  his  own  city. 

1  Cf.  II  R.,  59,  12,  e.f. ;  IV  R.,  1,  33  b  ;  and  Briinnow's  List,  No.  3051. 

2  The  Sumerian  name  Nana,  I  take  to  be  simply  an  epithet     It  is 
usually  written  NA-NA-A.     NA  signifies  "exalted"  (cf.  II  R.,  30,  24, 
g,  h,  Brtinnow,  List,  No.  1584,  and  Haupt,  ASKT.,  p.  136,  §  5).     Words 
are  in  Sumerian  frequently  repeated  for  emphasis  ;  thus  we  get  NA-NA. 
This  repetition  is  too  frequent  in  verbs  to  need  illustration,  but  it  also 
occurs  in  nouns;  cf.  UD-UD,  OBI.,  No.  87,  col.  1,  1.  46;  and  the  final 
A  is  the  repetition  of  the  final  syllable  in  the  emphatic  state.    Thus 


TRANSFORMATIONS  IN  BABYLONIA  183 

we  have  a  right  accordingly  to  read  the  sign  Ishtar  in 
both  places  where  it  occurs  in  the  inscription  of  Lugaltarsi. 
Clear  evidence  is  thus  presented  of  the  development  of  Jj 
the  old  mother  goddess  into  a  masculine  and  feminineli 
deity  at  Kish,  parallel  to  that  of  Athtar  in  Arabia,  —  a'v 
development  produced  by  the  transformation  in  the  social 
structure  caused  by  the  changed  environment. 

If  one  is  inclined  to  object  to  the  conclusion  just  reached, 
he  might  urge  that  this  inscription  very  likely  comes  from 
Telloh,  and  that  accordingly  it  may  not  represent  the 
religious  ideas  of  Kish  at  all,  and  that  as  Enlil  is  so  con- 
stantly called  "  King  of  countries  "  Ishtar  may  have  been 
written  in  the  first  line  by  a  scribal  error  for  Enlil.  These 
are  two  considerations  which  certainly  deserve  to  be  met. 
To  take  the  second  one  first,  it  may  be  remarked  that  in 
the  inscriptions  from  Telloh,  Gudea  frequently  calls  Nana- 
Ishtar  "  Mistress  of  countries,"  l  and  that  there  was  at 
Shirpurla  a  god  Lugal-Erim,  who  seems  to  have  been  but 
another  phase  of  Nana-Ishtar,  "  Mistress  of  Erim."2  Sup- 
pose then  that  Lugaltarsi  was  addressing  these,  our  con- 
clusion would  still  be  just,  though  it  would  apply  to 
Shirpurla  instead  of  Kish. 

But  probably  it  applies  to  Kish,  as  the  inscriptions  from 
Susa,  recently  published  by  Father  Scheil,3  seem  to  confirm 
it.  The  most  important  of  these  inscriptions  is  from 

NA-NA-A  means  "the  exalted  one,"  and  was  applied  as  naturally  to  the 
supreme  mother  goddess  in  primitive  times  as  sirtu  (MAG.)  was  applied 
to  the  same  goddess,  with  a  similar  meaning  in  the  Gilgamish  epic 
(cf.  Haupt  Nimrodepos,  p.  141,  1.  163.  Jensen  KB.,  Vol.  VI,  p.  241 
renders  it  belit  Hani,  "  lady  of  the  gods,"  which  is  an  interpretation  rather 
than  a  translation). 

1  Cf.   e.g.  Statue  C,  col.  ii,  1.  2,  and  col.  iv,  1.  10 ;  i.e.  de  Sarzec's 
Decouvertes,  pi.  13,  No.  1.     Cf.  Records  of  the  Past,  2d  ser.,  Vol.  II, 
pp.  87,  89. 

2  See  de  Sarzec,  Decouvertes,  pi.  8,  col.  ii,  1.  2,  and  col.  iv,  11.  8,  9. 
Cf.  also  Records  of  the  Past,  2d  ser.,  Vol.  I,  pp.  75,  77,  and  KB.,  Vol.  Ill1, 
pp.  21,  23. 

8  Memoires  de  la  delegation  en  Perse,  Tom.  H.  Textes  elamites-semi- 
tiques,  Paris,  1900. 


184  SEMITIC   ORIGINS 


Manishtu-irba,  king  of  Kish.  It  shows  that  the  kings  of 
Kish  had  conquered  Susa  at  a  very  early  date.  In  other 
archaic  texts  from  Susa,  written  by  men  who  were  subject 
to  some  foreign  power,  probably  Kish,  the  ideogram  for 
Susa  is  the  ideogram  for  Ishtar,  plus  ERIN,  which  means 
"cedar  forest."1  This  same  combination  of  signs  is  also 
used  to  represent  the  name  of  a  deity,  which  would  accord- 
ingly be  "  Ishtar  of  the  cedar  forest."  2  That  deity  is  once 
called  "  Lady "  and  "  King "  in  the  same  inscription.3 
Either,  therefore,  the  Semites  of  Kish  had  planted  the 
worship  of  their  goddess  at  Susa,  where  she  became 
metamorphosed  into  a  god,  or  they  had  identified  her,  after 
she  had  been  so  metamorphosed  at  Kish,  with  a  god  which 
they  found  already  at  Susa.  The  result  is  for  our  purpose 
the  same  in  either  case,  for  it  confirms  the  development 
suggested  by  the  inscription  of  Lugaltarsi. 

It  will  be  best  to  examine  next  th^gods  pf^Shirpurla 
(otherwise  called  Lagash),4  since  we  have  more  abundant 
information  concerning  its  pantheon  than  we  have  con- 
cerning the  gods  of  any  other  Babylonian  city  at  a  date 
equally  early.  From  the  inscriptions  of  Gudea,  who  was 
ruler  of  Shirpurla  about  3000  B.C.,  it  is  possible  to  form  a 
tolerably  clear  idea  of  its  principal  deities  for  Gudea's 
time,  and  the  occasional  glimpses  which  the  inscriptions 
of  his  predecessors  give  us  of  these  deities,  assure  us  that 
substantially  the  same  pantheon  extended  back  to  4500 
B.C.,  or  earlier.6  The  city  or  region  of  Shirpurla  (for  it 

1  Scheil,  op.  cit.,  58,  59,  63,  69. 

2  Ibid.,  pp.  58,  59,  1.  8. 

8  Ibid.,  p.  69.  It  seems  probable  that  this  is  the  same  deity  which  was 
later  called  Khumbaba,  and  who  dwelt  in  the  cedar  wood  in  the  midst  of 
such  magnificence.  Cf.  the  Gilgamish  epic,  tablet  V,  Haupt,  Nimrodepos 
pp.  24  ff.,  28,  64,  68,  and  KB.,  Vol.  VI,  p.  159  fl. 

*  Cf.  Pinches,  Guide  to  the,  Kouyunjik  Gallery,  London,  1884,  p.  7. 

6  See  the  inscriptions  of  Urukagina  and  other  early  kings  in  KB.,  Vol. 
Ill1,  p.  10  ff.,  and  in  Radau,  op.  cit.,  p.  48  ff.  Also  the  B  inscription  of 
monument  Elan,  which  must  be  much  older.  (Cf.  Ward  in  PAOS.,  1885, 
p.  Ivii,  Jour,  of  Am.  Arch.,  1st  ser.,  Vol.  IV,  pi.  v,  and  my  translation, 
JAOS.,  Vol.  XXII,  p.  123.) 


TRANSFORMATIONS  IN  BABYLONIA  185 

is  not  certain  that  it  was  simply  one  city)1  was,  as  Amiaud 
pointed  out2  and  as  other  scholars  have  also  observed,3 
composed  of  four  cities  or  districts,  each  of  which  possessed 
its  tutelary  deity.  These  four  districts  were  Girsu,  in 
which  the  god  Ningirsu  was  the  chief  deity  ;  Uruazagga, 
the  chief  deity  of  which  was  the  goddess  Bau  ;  Nina,  over 
which  the  goddess  Nina  presided,  and  a  town  the  name  of 
which  most  scholars  read  as  Gishgalla,  but  which  I,  with 
Jensen,  would  read  Erim,  the  principal  divinity  of  which 
was  the  goddess  Ishtar  or  Nana.  By  the  time  of  Gudea 
these  four  places  had  long  been  united  under  one  sov- 
ereignty, and  the  four  deities  had  been  given  places  in  one 
mythological  family.  Ningirsu  and  Bau  were  husband 
and  wife,  Nina  was  the  sister  of  Ningirsu,  while  Nana  was 
perhaps  his  mother.4  Shirpurla  afforded  at  this  time 
many  other  deities  beside  these,  but  these  were  formed  into 
an  amicable  family,  while  most  of  the  others  were  grouped 
about  them  as  subordinates.  A  few,  like  En-lil  or  Bel  of 
Nippur,  were  superior  to  these  four.  This  superiority  of 
the  gods  of  other  cities  had,  however,  grown  out  of  previ- 
ously existing  political  conditions,  while  the  gods  sub- 
ordinate to  this  group  had  either  been  developed  by  the 
application  of  epithets  from  a  few  primary  deities,  or  bor- 
rowed from  other  places. 

If  now  we  apply  to  the  principal  deities  of  Shir- 
purla the  rule  formulated  above,5  we  reach  the  conclusion 
that  Uruazagga,  Nina,  and  Erim  were  either  Sumerian 
settlements  which  had  escaped  war,  or  Semitic  settlements, 
because  their  chief  divinities  were  goddesses.  As  the 
former  alternative  is  contrary  to  all  probability,  we  are 
driven  to  regard  them  as  Semitic.  This  conclusion  is  con- 

1  Cf.  Ball,  PSBA.,  Vol.  XV,  p.  61  fl. ;  Hommel,  PSBA.,  Vol.  XV, 
p.  108  ff.  ;  and  Davis,  PAOS.,  1895,  p.  ccxiii  ff. 

2  Records  of  the  Past,  2d  ser.,  Vol.  I,  p.  46  ff. 

8  See  Davis  in  PAOS.,  1895,  p.  ccxiii  ff.,  and  Price  in  AJSL.,  Vol.  XVI, 
p.  48  ff. 

«  Cf.  Davis  in  PAOS.,  1895,  p.  cciv. 
•  p.  179  ff. 


186  SEMITIC  ORIGINS 


firmed  by  the  traces  of  Semitic  idiom  which  appear  in  the 
inscriptions  of  Shirpurla.1  If  this  be  true,  these  three 
feminine  divinities  were  three  forms  of  the  goddess  Ishtar, 
and  it  will  be  instructive  to  examine  them  a  little  more 
closely. 

To  begin  with  Nana,  it  is  clear  from  the  preceding 
argument  that  her  real  name  was  Ishtar,  and  that  she  was 
probably  so  called  in  the  popular  speech  of  Erim.  The 
statements  made  concerning  her  by  the  kings  would  well 
apply  to  Ishtar.  Ur-Bau  calls  her  "  the  brilliant,  the 
exalted  lady,"  2  and  Gudea,  "  the  bearer  of  the  word  of 
life." 3  Davis  has  pointed  out  that  Ninkharsag  was 
originally  the  same  goddess  as  Ishtar,  but  worshipped 
under  a  separate  epithet,  and  the  inscriptions  bear  out  the 
statement.*  Under  this  epithet  Entemena,  about  4100 
B.C.,  built  a  temple  to  her,5  Eannadu  and  Entemena  claim 
to  have  been  nourished  by  her  milk,  as  does  Lugalzaggisi,6 
and  Gudea  a  millennium  later  calls  her  the  "  mother  of  the 
city's  children."  7  That  Nana  (Ishtar)  was  held  in  high 
esteem  in  other  ways  is  shown  by  the  fact  that  Eannadu 
claims  that  she  gave  him  the  patesiship  of  Shirpurla  and 

1  Cf.  Eadau,  op.  cit.,  pp.  145-147.    The  language  chiefly  spoken  in 
Shirpurla  was  probably  Semitic,  but  writing  had  been  adopted  here  from 
the  Sumerians  at  a  date  long  before  the  use  of  the  cuneiform  character 
for  the  expression  of  thought  in  Semitic  had  begun  in  neighboring  Baby- 
lonian cities.     It  was  apparently  conformity  to  ancient  custom  which 
maintained  the  use  of  Sumerian  for  the  purpose  of  written  expression  so 
long  at  Shirpurla,  when  at  Kish,  Guti,  Lulubi,  and  Agade  writing  in 
Semitic  had  been  going  on  for  some  hundreds  of  years. 

2  Cf .  de  Sarzec's  Decouvertes  en  Chaldee,  pi.  8,  col.  iv,  1.  9 ;  cf.  KB, 
Vol.  HIS  p.  23. 

8  See  Price's  Great  Cylinder  Inscriptions  A  &  B  of  Gudea,  Cyl.  A, 
col.  xiv,  1.  26. 

4  Cf.  PAOS.,  1895,  p.  ccxiv.  6  See  Radau,  op.  cit.,  p.  101. 

6  Cf.  Galet  A,  Rev.  d'assyr.,  Vol.  IV,  pi.  i,  col.  ii,  1.  6,  and  my  trans- 
lation in  JOAS.,  Vol.  XXIi,  p.  186,  n.  6.     Cf.  OBI.,  No.  115,  and  Radau, 
op.  cit.,  p.  118,  and  OBI.,  No.  87,  col.  i,  11.  28-29,  and  Radau,  op.  cit., 
p.  133. 

7  Cf.  de  Sarzec,  op.  cit.,  pi.  20,  col.  i,  1.  3  ;  Amiaud,  Records  of  the  Past, 
2d  ser.,  Vol.  II,  p.  75,  and  Radau,  op.  cit.,  p.  198. 


TRANSFORMATIONS  IN  BABYLONIA  187 

the  kingship  of  Kish.1  From  such  statements  as  these  we 
can,  with  the  knowledge  gained  in  the  preceding  pages, 
fill  out  a  tolerably  correct  picture  of  her  character  and 
worship.  She  was  simply  the  old  Semitic  mother  goddess. 
Since  she  was  the  tutelary  deity  of  the  city  Erim,  its 
inhabitants  were  probably  chiefly  Semites. 

There  is  also  evidence  that  the  Ishtar  of  the  town 
had,  like  the  goddess  worshipped  by  Lugaltarsi,  begun  to 
undergo  differentiation  into  a  masculine  and  a  feminine 
deity.  She  is  several  times  referred  to  as  Lugal-Erim, 
i.e.  "  king  of  Erim,"  showing  that  a  confusion  of  thought 
with  reference  to  her  sex  had  already  begun.2 

A  goddess  of  this  group  about  whom  somewhat  more  is 
known  is  Nina,  the  tutelary  deity  of  the  city  or  district 
of  the  same  name.  She  is  represented  in  the  inscriptions 
by  an  ideogram,  which  is  compounded  of  the  ideogram 
for  house  into  which  that  for  fish  is  inserted.3  This  indi- 
cates that  she  was  previously  the  goddess  of  a  fishing 
town.  The  same  ideogram  was  afterwards  employed  to 
write  the  name  of  the  city  of  Nineveh  in  Assyria.  It 
was,  of  course,  used  to  express  the  name  of  the  city  of 
Nina  in  Shirpurla.  The  name  of  the  Assyrian  city  was 
pronounced  Nina  or  Ninua.  As  nun  is  the  Semitic  Baby- 
lonian for  fish,  we  have  in  the  name  Ninua  a  hint  at  what 
men  in  the  Assyrian  period  considered  her  name  to  mean. 
Perhaps  in  Sumerian  she  had  been  called  NIN-A,  "lady 
of  waters,"  which  was  by  a  folk  etymology  afterwards 
made  in  Semitic  to  mean  "the  fish."  The  reasons  for 
this  we  shall  have  occasion  to  examine  by  and  by. 

1  Cf.  Galet  A,  col.  v,  1.  23  to  col.  vi,  1.  5.     Text  Eev.  d'assyr.,  Vol. 
IV,  pi.  i,  and  my  translation  JOAS.,  Vol.  XXI J,  p.  186,  n.  6. 

2  Cf.  Eev.  d'assyr.,  Vol.  IV,  pi.  1,  col.  ii,  1.  13  (cf.  Thureau  Dangin 
in  Eev.  Sem.,  Vol.  V,  p.  67,  and  Radau,  op.  «'«.,  p.  85),  and  de  Sarzec, 
op.  cit.,  pi.  8,  col.  ii,  1,  2  (cf.  Amiaud,  op.  cit.,  p.  75,  and  Jensen,  op.  cit., 
pp.  20,  21),  also  CTBM.,  Pt.  X,  No.  86900,  11.  28,  29.    The  development 
noted  in  the  inscription  of  Lugaltarsi  (above,  p.  181  ff.)  should  be  com- 
pared. 

8  Cf.  Thureau  Dangin's  Eecherches,  No.  350. 


188  SEMITIC  ORIGINS 


Our  knowledge  of  the  worship  of  Nina  begins  about 
4300  B.C.,  with  the  inscriptions  of  Ur-Nina.  He  declares 
that  he  built  her  temple,  renewed  her  image,  and  caused 
her  servants  to  build  for  her  two  high  places.1  The 
word  used  for  "  servants  "  is  expressed  by  the  ideogram  for 
"dog,"  the  Semitic  term  for  sacred  prostitute  (see  below, 
Chapter  VI).  Eannadu  and  Entemena  call  themselves  a 
little  later  the  "  Chosen  of  her  heart,"  2  and  Entemena  built 
various  buildings  for  her.3  Ur-Bau  calls  her  the  mother 
of  the  goddess  Nin-mar,4  and  Gudea,  the  "mistress  of 
tablet  writing,"6  "the  child  of  Eridu,"6  and  "the  supreme 
lady."7  He  says  he  built  her  temple  and  placed  in  it  the 
image  of  a  lion.8  An  inscription  from  the  time  of  Dungi 
calls  that  king  "  the  lord  whom  Nina  loves,"  and  he  calls 
on  an  unnamed  goddess,  who  was  probably  Nina,  in  behalf 
of  his  life.9 

From  the  general  course  of  our  argument  we  should 
expect  a  goddess  like  Nina  to  be  a  form  of  Ishtar.  This 

1  See  de  Sarzec,  Decouvertes,  pi.  2  in  No.  2,     KB.,  Vol.  IIP,  11-15,  and 
Radau,  op.  cit.,  pp.  61-63.    Where  Radau  reads  "his  wife  for  Nina"  we 
should  read,  "the  lady  Nina." 

2  Cf.  Rev.  d'assyr.,  Vol.  IV,  pi.  i,  col.  i,  1.  9,  and  col.  ii,  1.  1 ;  also  Rev. 
semitique,  Vol.  V,  p.  67  ;  also  de  Sarzec,  Decouvertes,  pi.  43,  and  Radau, 
op.  cit.,  p.  116.  , 

8  Cf.  Rev.  d'assyr.,  Vol.  II,  pp.  148,  149,  col.  iv  ;  Radau,  op.  cit.,  p.  113. 
Also  de  Sarzec,  Decouvertes,  pi.  31,  No.  2,  and  Radau,  op.  cit.,  p.  94. 

4  De  Sarzec,  op.  cit.,  pi.  8,  col.  v,  11.  8-10 ;  cf.  KB.,  Vol.  Ill1,  p.  25. 

6  Cf.  PSBA.,  Vol.  XIII,  pp.  62,  64,  No.  2;  Radau,  op.  cit.,  p.  193; 
Gudea,  Statue  B  in  de  Sarzec's  Decouvertes,  pi.  16  ff.,  and  KB.,  Vol.  IIP, 
p.  47. 

6  Cylinder  A  (cf.  Price's  Great  Cylinder  Inscriptions'),  col.  xx,  1.  16. 

*  PSBA.,  Vol.  XIII,  pp.  62,  64,  No.  2. 

8  Ibid. 

9  The  text  is  published  in  CTBM.,  Pt.  V,  No.  12218,  and  is  as  follows : 
(I.1)  Dingir  (NIN)  LIG  (2)  NIN-A-NI  (3)  NAM-TI  (4)  Dingir  DUN-GI 
(4)   NITAG    LIG-GA   (5)   LUGAL    URU-#WVfAMUG-KA  (6)  dingir 
BA-U-NIN-A-AN  (7)  ZABAR  ZID  (8)  UR  dingir  NIN-GIR-SU  (9)  EN 
KI  AKA  dingir  NINA-KA-KID  (10)  NAM-BA-KA-NI  (11)  MU-NA- 
DIM,  i.e.  "  To  the  powerful  lady,  his  mistress  for  the  life  of  Dungi,  the 
mighty  hero,  king  of  Ur,  the  exalted  prince  of  Bau,  lady  of  heaven,  the 
brilliant,  the  faithful  one,  servant  of  Ningirsu,  the  lord  who  is  beloved  of 


TRANSFORMATIONS  IN  BABYLONIA  189 

expectation  is  confirmed  by  the  fact  that  she  had  a  com- 
pany of  prostitutes,  and  was  probably  the  lady  of  life.  It 
is  further  confirmed  by  the  fact  that  Entemena  declares  in 
several  different  inscriptions  that  he  built  a  storehouse  of 
dates  for  Nina.1  The  date-palm  we  have  seen  to  be  so 
closely  connected  with  the  Semitic  goddess  that  this 
becomes  another  evidence  that  Nina  was  a  form  of  that 
divinity.  Gudea,  as  we  have  noted,  says  that  he  placed 
in  Nina's  temple  a  statue  of  a  lion.  Dr.  Ward  has  called 
attention  to  a  seal  in  the  Metropolitan  Museum  in  New 
York,  which  represents  a  nude  goddess  riding  on  a  lion 
drawing  a  chariot  and  holding  the  lightnings  in  her 
hands.2  He  dates  the  cylinder  at  3500  to  4000  B.C.  It 
seems  to  me  probable  that  this  is  a  representation  of  Nina, 
and  that  it  gives  pictorial  evidence  of  her  close  relation- 
ship to  Ishtar. 

The  worship  of  the  third  of  these  goddesses,  Bau,  is 
known  to  us  from  the  same  early  sources  as  that  of  Nina, 
since  she  is  mentioned  in  the  inscriptions  of  Urkagina,3 
Ur-Nina,4  and  Gudea.5  She  is  easily  shown  to  be  a  form 
of  Ishtar.  Ur-Bau  calls  her  the  "good  lady,"6  while 
Gudea  calls  her  his  chief  mistress,7  and  has  left  on  record 
two  prayers  in  which  he  applies  the  term  mistress  in 

Nina,  the  beauty  of  her  building  constructed."  Of  course  the  goddess 
addressed  in  the  first  line  may  be  Ishtar  or  Bau,  but  since  the  prince  calls 
himself  the  beloved  of  Nina,  it  seems  more  probable  that  he  addresses  her 
throughout. 

1  See  e.  g.  CTBM.,  Pt.  X,  No.  86900,  11. 14,  15,  and  de  Sarzec's  Decou- 
vertes,  PI.  5  bis,  Face,  col.  iv,  11.  2,  3. 

2  Cf.  AJSL.,  Vol.   XIV,  p.  95 ;   cf.  PSBA.,  Vol.  XVIII,   pp.   156, 
157. 

»  Cf.  Amiaud  in  Records  of  the  Past,  2d  ser.,  Vol.  I,  p.  69,  and  Radau, 
op.  cit.,  p.  50. 

4  Cf.  Eev.  d'assyriologie,  Vol.  IV,  p.  106,  No.  11,  and  Radau,  op.  cit., 
p.  65. 

8  See  e.  g.  KB.,  Vol.  IIP,  pp.  58,  59. 

•  Cf.  de  Sarzec  Decouvertes,  pi.  8,  col.  iv,  L  3  ff.,  Amiaud,  op.  cit..  p. 
76,  and  KB.,  Vol.  Ill,  p.  23. 

7  Cyl.  A,  col.  xxiv,  1.  6. 


190  SEMITIC  ORIGINS 


several  different  ways  and  prays  especially  for  life,1  as 
though  she  were  the  life  giver.  In  another  passage  he  calls 
her  "mother  Bau."2  Galalama  calls  her  also  "  mother  (?) 
of  Shirpurla."3  On  New  Year's  day,  probably  at  the 
beginning  of  the  first  month,  Gudea  tells  us  also  that  he 
celebrated  the  festival  of  the  goddess  Bau,  offering  her 
various  sacrifices  of  oxen,  sheep,  and  lambs ;  dates  and 
shoots  of  palm  forming  also  a  prominent  feature  of  the 
offering.4  This  spring  festival  was,  as  we  have  shown  in 
a  previous  chapter,  the  old  spring  festival  of  the  yeaning 
time,  and  was  a  festival  of  the  goddess  Ishtar.  A  mother 
goddess,  whose  festival  celebrated  the  birth  of  young, 
would,  among  a  Semitic  people,  be  a  form  of  Ishtar.  The 
name  BA-U  was  simply  an  epithet,  meaning  "producer  of 
food,"  and  was  probably  given  her  as  the  goddess  of  the 
date  tree  and  then  of  agriculture  in  general.  Bau  had  a 
brother,  Ningishzida,5  whose  name  means  "  lady  (or  lord 
(?))  of  the  tree  of  life."  Jastrow  takes  him  to  be  identical 
with  Ningirsu,6  but  Price  considers  this  to  be  impossible.7 
In  view  of  the  development  at  Kish  noted  above,8  where 
Ishtar  was  divided  into  a  masculine  and  a  feminine  deity, 
it  is  probable  that  Ningishzida  was  originally  an  epithet 
given  to  Bau  in  consequence  of  her  connection  with  the 
palm  tree,  arid  gradually,  as  she  was  differentiated,  con- 
tinued to  be  applied  to  the  masculine  portion  of  her. 
Possibly  it  may  seem  more  probable  to  some  that  Ningish- 
zida was  a  name  of  Tammuz,  and  that  he  is,  in  consequence 
of  this,  a  brother  of  Bau-Ishtar ;  the  result  is  in  this  case 

1  Cf.  de  Sarzec,  op.  cit.,  pi.  13,  Nos.  1  and  4,  Amiaud,  Records  of  the 
Past,   2d   ser.,   Vol.    II,   pp.    92,    103,   and   Radau,   op.    cit.,   pp.   202, 
208. 

2  Cyl.  B,  col.  xvii,  1.  2. 

8  Cf.  de  Sarzec,  op.  cit.,  pi.  21,  No.  4,  and  KB.,  Vol.  Ill1,  p.  71. 

*  Cf.  KB.,  Vol.  Ill,  p.  61,  and  Amiaud,  op.  cit.,  p.  101. 

6  Cf.  Cyl.  B,  col.  xxiii,  1.  5,  and  Davis,  PAOS.,  1895,  p.  ccxv. 

6  Religion  of  Babylonia  and  Assyria,  p.  92. 

»  AJSL.,  Vol.  XVII,  p.  60. 

8  p.  181  ff. 


TRANSFORMATIONS  IN  BABYLONIA  191 

the  same,  though  the  goal  by  which  it  is  reached  be 
slightly  different.1 

At  the  time  from  which  most  of  our  information  comes, 
the  four  districts  of  Shirpurla  had  long  been  united  under 
one  sovereignty.  This  had  produced  religious  syncretism, 
and  the  gods  were  formed  into  a  pantheon.  In  this  pan- 
theon Bau  was  regarded  as  the  wife  of  Ningirsu,  the  god 
of  Girsu,  the  fourth  of  the  districts  of  Shirpurla.2  She  is 
also  said  to  be  the  daughter  of  Anu,8  but  this,  as  we  shall 
see  by  and  by,  has  less  historical  significance  than  some  of 
the  mythological  statements  concerning  other  forms  of  the 
goddess. 

The  view  we  have  taken  of  the  nature  of  Bau  is  con- 
firmed in  another  way.  One  of  her  titles  was  Gatumdug.4 
Indeed,  under  this  name  she  became  almost  a  separate  god- 
dess. As  Gatumdug  she  is  frequently  called  "mother  of 
Shirpurla,"6  but  is  shown  to  be  originally  identical  with 
Bau  since  she  is  said  to  sit  enthroned  in  Uruazagga,6  Bau's 
city. 

Ningirsu,  the  god  of  Girsu,  the  fourth  district  of  Shir- 
purla, is  mentioned  in  the  inscriptions  much  oftener  than 
any  of  the  goddesses  of  the  other  districts.  Most  of  the 
references,  important  as  they  are  for  a  knowledge  of  other 
phases  of  the  religion,  do  not  materially  help  us  in  solving 
the  problem  of  origins.7  The  application  of  our  econom- 

1  Other  epithets  of  Bau  were  Ma-ma  (cf.  OBI.,  Pt.  n,  p.  48,  n.  6), 
and  Gu-la.    In  later  times,  this  last  name  prevailed  (cf.  Jastrow,  Religion 
of  Babylonia  and  Assyria,  pp.  60,  106,  166,  etc.),  and  became  the  goddess 
of  healing  and  of  the  nether  world. 

2  Cf.  Davis,  op.  cit.,  p.  ccxiv. 

»  Cf.  KB.,  Vol.  Ill1,  p.  53,  Amiaud,  op.  cit.,  Vol.  II,  p.  91. 
4  Cf.  Amiaud,  op.  cit.,  Vol.  I,  p.  60. 

6  See,  e.g.,  de  Sarzec,  op.  cit.,  pi.  14,  col.  i,  1.  1  ff.,  Amiaud,  op.  cit., 
Vol.  II,  p.  97. 

•  Cf.  de  Sarzec,  op.  cit.,  pi.  14,  col.  iii,  1. 6  ff.,  and  Amiaud,  op.  cit.,  Vol. 
n,  p.  99.  Gatumdug  is  once  an  epithet  of  Nana,  see  below,  p.  260,  n.  6. 

7  He  is  called  in  them,  "  the  king,"  "  the  great  warrior  of  Enlil,"  etc., 
epithets  which  are  important  as  showing  his  position  in  the  pantheon  of 
Shirpurla,  but  which  throw  little  light  on  his  original  nature. 


192  SEMITIC  ORIGINS 


icoreligious  test  has  made  it  clear  that  the  towns  or  dis- 
tricts of  Erim,  NinS,,  and  Uruazagga  were  peopled  mainly 
by  Semites,  and  probably  founded  by  Semites.  At  all 
events,  at  the  very  dawn  of  history,  the  Semitic  element 
in  the  civilization  is  predominant.  Is  the  same  true  of 
the  remaining  district  of  Shirpurla,  Girsu  ?  I  think  that 
it  is,  for  the  following  reasons:  1.  The  name  Ningirsu 
really  means  "lady  of  Girsu."1  It  is  true  that  in  at  least 
one  phrase  the  Sumerian  NIN  seems  to  mean  "lord,"2  but 
it  has  almost  universally  a  feminine  signification,3  which 
was  no  doubt  its  primary  meaning.  The  Sumerians  had 
another  word  for  "  lord  "  (viz.  EN),  and  they  can  hardly 
be  supposed  to  be  so  lacking  in  the  sense  of  sex  as  to  have 
expressed  at  first  both  "lord"  and  "lady"  by  the  same 
word.  Confusion  between  the  two  words  would  be  very 
natural,  however,  if  a  goddess  had  been  metamorphosed 
into  a  god  as  was  done  in  South  Arabia  and  at  Kish.  The 
word  in  the  name  which  once  had  a  feminine  meaning 
would  then  seem  to  have  a  masculine  signification,  thus 
producing  the  confusion.  2.  At  the  time  of  Gudea,  both 
masculine  and  feminine  qualities  may  in  one  passage  still 
be  traced  in  the  conception  of  this  god.  Certain  gifts  are 
presented  in  one  line  to  "  mother  Ningirsu,"  and  two  lines 

1  The  name  of  the  city  or  district  is  usually  spelled  GIR-SU,  but  in 
two  or  three  inscriptions  in  de  Sarzec's  Decouvertcs  (cf.  No.  4  bis.,  and 
KB.,  Vol.  Ill1,  p.  10,  col.  i,  1.  6,  and  Radau,  op.  cit.,  p.  58,  n.  6),  it  is 
spelled  SU-GIR,  or  SUN-GIR  (cf.  Hommel,  Sum.  Les.,  No.  7).  Some 
scholars  have  therefore  taken  it  to  be  identical  with  the  later  Stimir,  cf. 
Radau,  ibid.,  and  Rogers,  History  of  Babylonia  and  Assyria,  Vol.  I,  p. 
356,  who  reads  it  Sungir.  If  GIR-SU  be  the  spelling,  it  probably  meant 
"  body  lance,"  perhaps  equivalent  to  "girdle  lance."  This  was  at  least 
an  early  folk  interpretation  of  the  name,  for  in  a  Babylonian  inscrip- 
tion from  before  5000  B.C.,  the  Blau  Monuments,  a  certain  Khakhatabbar 
says  that  Ningirsu's  monument  of  protection,  a  lance  (GIR)  he  brought 
and  placed  in  his  temple.  The  inscription  is  inscribed  on  an  object  shaped 
like  a  lance  blade  (cf.  American  Journal  of  Archaeology,  1st  ser.,  Vol. 
IV,  pi.  v,  and  my  article  "Notes  on  the  Blau  Monuments"  in  JAOS., 
Vol.  XXIP,  p.  123). 

*  AL.*  No.  301",  AL*  No.  30Qi>. 

»  Cf.  Briinnow's  List,  Nos.  10984-10990. 


TRANSFORMATIONS  IN  BABYLONIA  193 

farther  on,  to  "lord  Ningirsu."1  This  confusion  can  only 
be  accounted  for  by  supposing  that  there  was  a  time  when 
Ningirsu  was  the  goddess  of  Girsu,  and  that  she  had  after- 
wards been  transformed  into  a  god.  3.  A  bilingual  frag- 
ment of  a  later  time  equates  EN-GIR-SI  (the  word 
NIN,  "lady,"  having  been  here  changed  to  EN,  "lord"), 
with  Tammuz.2  This  indicates  that  Ningirsu  and  Tam- 
muz  were  closely  related,  just  as  Ishtar  and  Tammuz  were. 
If  Ningirsu  were  a  transformed  Ishtar,  the  Tammuz  which 
originally  accompanied  her  may  well  have  been  fused  with 
the  resultant  god  either  during  or  after  the  process  of 
transformation.  4.  If  Ningirsu  had  been  a  Sumerian 
deity,  the  prehistoric  wars  would  probably  have  completely 
effected  his  transformation  from  a  goddess  before  the 
dawn  of  history.  5.  Ningirsu  came  to  mean  husband- 
man,8 —  a  meaning  which  appears  to  have  been  derived 
from  the  fact  that  he  was  a  god  of  fertility  and  life,  such 
as  a  transformed  Ishtar  would  be.  6.  Entemena,  in  a 
mutilated  text  on  an  old  gate  socket,  the  reading  of  which 
is  not  quite  certain,  appears  to  call  him  "  god  of  life,"  4  as 
the  goddesses  of  Shirpurla  are  called  "lady  of  life." 
7.  The  scores  of  phallic  shaped  cones  inscribed  to  Nin- 
girsu, found  at  Shirpurla,  such  as  are  pictured  in  de  Sar- 
zec's  D&couvertes  en  Chaldte,  pi.  38,  point  to  a  connection 
of  his  cult  with  the  sexual  cult  of  Ishtar.  For 


i  Cyl.  B,  col.  x,  11.  5,  7.  The  passage  reads  (1.  3)  GISTIN-A  DA 
GISTIN-TIN-A  DA  (4)  UZ  AZAG  UZ  GA  GU  BIR-MIR  (5)  AMA 
dingir  NIN-GIR-SU-KA  (6)  NI-GA-BI  ES  E-SI-A-MUS  NU-GUB- 
DA  (7)  EN  IMIR  SIBA  BIR-IMIR  EN  dingir  NIN-GIR-SU-RA 
(8)  MI-NI-DA  MU-NA-DA  DIB  SUM,  i.e.  "Wine  he  brought  up, 
strong  drink  he  brought  up,  a  goat,  a  perfect  goat,  milk,  the  drink  from 
the  asses  of  mother  Ningirsu,  the  cream  of  their  milk  in  the  temple  Eshia- 
mush  he  offered  ;  to  the  lord  of  the  asses,  the  shepherd  of  the  asses,  the 
lord  Ningirsu  he  raised,  he  lifted  up,  he  brought,  he  presented  it." 

*  IV  R.,  27,  No.  6,  col.  ii,  11.  42-43. 

«  Cf.  V.  R.,  16,  39  ef,  and  Briinnow's  List,  No.  10995. 

*  CTBM.,  Pt.  V,  No.  12061,  11.  10-12.    They  read  dingir  NIN-GIR-SU 
LUGAL(?)  DINGIR-A-NI  ............  DINGIR  TI(?),  i.e.  "Ningirsu 

the  king,  his  god,  the  god  of  life."    The  sign  TI,  "life,"  is  not  quite 
certain,  as  it  is  partly  erased. 

o 


194  SEMITIC   ORIGINS 


reasons  it  seems  highly  probable  that  Ningirsu  was  a  mascu- 
linized Ishtar..  The  fact  that  he  was  transformed,  while 
Nana,  Nina,  and  Bau  were  not,  is  probably  due  either  to 
the  fact  that  Girsu  was  the  conquering  and  the  more  war- 
like of  the  settlements  of  Shirpurla,  or  to  the  presence  of  a 
larger  Sumerian  element  there.  It  seems  probable  that 
Girsu  was  the  oldest  of  the  four  settlements.  Ningirsu, 
its  god,  appears  already  before  5000  B.C.,  under  that  name 
on  the  Blau  Monuments.1  This  presupposes  the  existence 
of  the  city  at  that  early  time.  There  is,  however,  in  the 
inscription  nothing  to  indicate  whether  Ningirsu  was  at 
that  time  masculine  or  feminine  (unless  the  fact  that  the 
sacrifice  consisted  of  ewes  may  point  to  a  goddess),  as  the 
suffix  used  in  referring  to  the  deity  may  be  used  in  either 
gender.2  Girsu,  too,  was  the  original  seat  of  the  monarchy, 
which  afterwards  conquered  the  other  districts,  for  Ur- 
kagina,  about  4500  B.C.,  styles  himself  indifferently  king 
of  Girsu  or  king  of  Shirpurla.  Girsu  must  have  been 
originally  quite  separate  from  the  other  districts.  Indeed, 
each  was  no  doubt  originally  quite  an  independent  settle- 
ment. That  that  settlement  was  predominantly  Semitic 
is  shown  by  the  Blau  Monuments,  for  the  superior  race 
who  are  pictured  upon  them  have  the  Semitic  nose,  while 
the  inferior  or  slave  race  which  they  show,  have  quite 
different  features.3 

The  conclusions  here  reached  are  not  at  all  in  conflict 
with  the  view  that  in  the  period  from  which  our  inscrip- 
tions come  Ningirsu  was  a  sun  god ;  they  simply  show 
that  before  he  was  identified  with  the  solar  orb  he  was  a 
chthonic  mother  goddess. 

No  doubt  some  Sumerian  elements  beside  their  sys- 
tem of  writing  entered  into  the  Semitic  civilization  of 

1  Cf.  my  article  "  Notes  on  the  Blau  Monuments  "  in  JA08.,Vo\.  XXII1, 
p.  123. 

2  It  is  NI ;  cf.  Briinnow's  List,  Nos.  5330,  5331. 

8  Cf.  American  Journal  of  Archaeology,  1st  ser.,  Vol.  IV,  pis.  iv 
and  v,  and  Ward,  ibid.,  p.  40. 


TRANSFORMATIONS  IN  BABYLONIA  195 

Shirpurla,  but  it  is  impossible  at  this  distance  to  tell  how 
great  they  were.  Possibly  some  of  the  elements  which 
helped  to  transform  Ningirsu  into  a  god  were  Sumerian. 
It  is  not  necessary  from  the  religious  point  of  view  to 
postulate  any  large  amount  of  such  influence  ;  the  laws  of 
Semitic  social  evolution  are  in  the  Mesopotamian  environ- 
ment sufficient  to  account  for  all  that  occurred  in  the 
realm  of  the  religion. 

Before  passing  from  Shirpurla  to  other  parts  of  Babylonia 
it  will  be  convenient  to  remind  ourselves  that  we  are  seek- 
ing OriginB  Which  lie  altOgefl^r  hflynnd  +JiA  V>iftri*nn  mf 


written  history  and  which  can  only  be  reconstructed  by 
working  backward  from  sporadic  survivals.  In  this  re- 
construction help  may  often  be  obtained  from  the  myths 
which  grew  up  around  the  pantheon  of  Shirpurla  and 
other  cities.  Even  at  the  early  date  when  the  written 
history  of  Babylonia  begins,  the  country  had  been  united 
in  various  political  organizations  till  some  gods  like  Enlil 
and  Enki  (Ea)  had  become  largely  dissociated  from  their 
original  habitations  and  had  entered  into  various  pantheons 
as  lord  of  the  earth  and  of  the  deep.  Anu  is  a  god  whose 
local  habitation1  we  cannot  trace,  and  who  seems  in  the 
historical  period  to  have  been  more  of  an  abstraction  than 
Enlil  and  Enki  He  had  been  added  to  these,  and  the 
three  had  been  formed  into  a  triad.  In  this  triad  Anu  in 
theory  stood  at  the  head,  but  in  practice  the  other  two 
were  more  honored.  There  are,  therefore,  three  classes  of 
myths  to  be  distinguished  at  the  very  dawn  of  Babylonian 
history  ;  (1)  those  which  recall  migrations  of  tribes  or 
parts  of  tribes  from  earlier  places  of  residence,  like  the 
myth  that  Nina  is  the  daughter  of  Enki  or  Ea  ; 2  (2)  those 
which  resulted  from  a  long  political  subjugation,  like  the 

1  See  Jastrow's  History  of  Babylonia  and  Assyria,  p.  89.  The  state- 
ment of  Jeremias  (Chantepie  de  la  Saussaye's  Seligionsgeschichte,  Vol.  I, 
p.  171),  that  he  was  the  god  of  Erech,  is  a  misconception.  One  might 
with  as  much  reason  call  him  a  god  of  Shirpurla.  See  below,  p.  218  ff. 

«IV  R.  1,  col.  ii,  1.  38  ;  cf.  Davis,  PAOS.,  1895,  p.  ccxv. 


196  SEMITIC  ORIGINS 


myth  that  Ningirsu  is  the  son  and  warrior  of  Eulil ; 1  and 
(3)  those  which  have  grown  up  out  of  the  later  abstract 
conceptions,  or  the  identification  of  the  gods  with  celestial 
objects,  like  the  myth  that  Bau  is  the  daughter  of  Anu.2 
Careful  examination  will  often  enable  us  to  distinguish 
these  different  classes  of  myths  from  one  another,  and  to 
do  so  will  aid  us  in  following  our  slender  thread  of  evi- 
dence through  the  tangled  mazes  of  Babylonian  life. 

Returning  now  to  the  first  of  the  three  myths  just  men- 
tioned, we  are  led  to  thj^city  of  Eridu,  the  most  southerly 
of  the  old  Babylonian  towns,  and  to  its  god  Ea.  Nina  is 
called  the  daughter  of  Ea  and  the  child  of  Eridu.3  Eridu 
was  the  city  of  the  god  Ea,  its  ideogram  being  the  same 
as  that  of  the  god  with  the  determinative  for  place  affixed.4 
It  was,  about  4000  or  5000  B.C.  or  earlier,  situated  on  the 
shore  of  the  Persian  Gulf.6  The  name  of  Nina  was,  as  we 
have  seen,  written  with  the  sign  for  house  around  the  sign 
for  fish ;  while  Ea  was  often  pictured  under  the  form  of  a 
fish,  or  as  clad  in  a  fishskin.  A  legend  preserved  for  us 
through  Berossos  and  Eusebius  tells  us  how  Oannes  (who 
is  certainly  identified  with  Ea6)  bore  the  form  of  a  fish, 
and  how  he  came  up  by  day  to  the  land  and  taught  men 
how  to  construct  houses,  till  the  earth,  collect  fruits, 
compile  laws,  and  all  other  useful  knowledge.7  In  the 
pictorial  representations  Ea  is  seen  as  part  man  and  part 
fish.8  The  fact  that  the  fish  form  enters  into  the  repre- 

1  See  e.g.,  Cyl.  A,  col.  vii,  1.  5,  col.  viii,  1.  21,  and  Cyl.  B,  col.  vi,  1.  6 ; 
cf.  Price,  AJSL.,  Vol.  XVII,  p.  49. 

2  See  above,  p.  191,  and  below. 
8  See  above,  p.  188. 

*  Cf.  Briinnow's  List,  Nos.  2625,  2645,  and  2649. 
6  Cf.  Sayce,  Hibbert  Lectures,  p.  104,  and  Peters,  Nippur,  Vol.  II, 
p.  299. 

6  Cf.  Lenormant,  Histoire  ancienne  de  V orient,  Vol.  V,  p.  231  ff., 
Sayce,  Hibbert  Lectures,  p.  131,  and  Peters,  Nippur,  Vol.  II,  p.  299. 

7  Cf.  Cory's  Ancient  Fragments,  p.  23  ff.,  also  a  cuneiform  original 
of  a  part  of  it,  published  by  Scheil  in  Eecueil  de  traveaux,  Vol.  XX, 
p.  126  ff. 

8  Cf.  Lenormant,  op.  cit.,  pp.  232,  238,  and  Sayce,  op.  cit.,  p.  133. 


TRANSFORMATIONS  IN  BABYLONIA  197 

sentations  of  both  Nina  and  Ea  confirms  the  statement  of 
the  mythology  that  the  two  were  kindred.  Sometimes 
the  fish  god  is  pictorially  represented  as  applying  the  fer- 
tilizing cone  to  the  sacred  palm  tree,1  and  this  gives  an- 
other thread  of  connection  between  the  two,  for  as  noted 
above,  Nina  was  the  goddess  to  whom  dates  were  sacred.2 
At  Eridu,  the  city  of  Ea,  there  was  also  a  sacred  tree,8 
no  doubt  a  palm,  so  that  it  is  no  accident  that  the  fish  god, 
or  god  of  the  water,  is  represented  as  fertilizing  the  palm. 
An  unpublished  cylinder  in  the  British  Museum  repre- 
sents Ea  thus  and  calls  him  "the  god  of  life."4  George 
Smith  called  attention  to  the  fact  that  an  unpublished 
brick  in  the  same  museum  is  inscribed  to  Ea  under  the 
name  Nin-Eridu,  or  "lady  of  Eridu."6  Amiaud  doubted 
whether  it  really  applied  to  that  god,6  but  there  can,  in 
view  of  the  development  which  we  have  traced  elsewhere,7 
be  no  doubt  of  it. 

The  meaning  of  all  these  facts  and  myths  would  seem  to 
be  this :  Eridu  waa  probably  the  oldest  Semitic  settlement 
in  Babylonia.  Hither  from  Arabia  the  Semites  came  and 
planted  their  earliest  colony,  probably  selecting  the  site 
because  they  found  their  sacred  palm  tree  already  growing 
there.  The  proximity  of  the  Persian  Gulf  led  them  in 
course  of  time  to  associate  their  goddess  with  that  body  of 
water  as  they  had  in  Arabia  associated  her  with  the  spring 
or  well  of  the  oasis.  If  a  Sumerian  fishing  goddess  pre- 
ceded her  here,  identification  of  the  two  may  have  hastened 
the  process.  That  in  time  she  should  be  associated  with 
the  fish  symbol  was  perfectly  natural.  In  the  lapse  of 
years  colonies  were  sent  out  to  other  points,  partly  in 
consequence  of  the  natural  multiplication  of  the  populace, 
and  partly  in  consequence  of  new  immigration  from 

1  See  Lenormant,  op.  cit. ,  p.  232.  2  p.  189. 

•Cf.  Jensen,  Kosmologie,  p.  99  ff.,  249,  n.  ;  Hilprecht,  OBI. ,  pt.  1, 
p.  28,  and  Radau,  Early  Babylonian  History,  p.  231. 

«  Sayce,  op.  cit.,  p.  133.  «  TSBA.,  Vol.  I,  p.  32. 

•  Records  of  the  Past,  2d  ser.,  Vol.  I,  p.  60. 

1  E.g.,  that  in  Athtar,  Ishtar  at  Kish,  and  Ningirsu. 


198  SEMITIC  ORIGINS 


Arabia.  Nina  was  one  of  these,  but  probably  by  no 
means  the  earliest.  The  first  colonists  at  Eridu  brought 
with  them  the  artificial  culture  of  the  palm  tree,  a  culture 
probably  before  unknown  to  the  country,  and  this  addi- 
tion to  such  knowledge  of  agricultural  pursuits  as  the 
country  may  have  possessed  before  led  in  process  of  time 
to  the  myth  that  Ea  was  the  source  whence  all  knowledge 
of  agriculture  and  civilized  pursuits  came.  As  this  myth 
grew  Ea  became  in  consequence  the  god  of  wisdom.  He 
was  so  regarded  by  Eannadu,1  Entemena,2  Lugalzaggisi,* 
and  through  all  the  subsequent  history.  As  Semitic 
society  was  in  this  environment  organized  on  another 
basis,  the  Ishtar  of  Eridu  was  transformed  into  a  god, 
as  happened  also  at  Kish  and  Girsu.  As  early  as  the 
time  of  Eannadu  the  transformation  had  occurred,  since 
he  is  called  "  king  " 4  by  that  monarch  as  he  is  centuries 
later  by  Ur-Bau6  and  Dungi.6 

The  worship  of  Ea  is  so  widespread  in  Babylonia  at  the 
first  dawn  of  history  that  we  are  compelled  to  suppose 
that  in_prehistoric  time  Eridu  had  been  the  seat  of  an 
empire  which  held  sway  over  all  of  southern  Babylonia. 
There  is  no  improbability  to  offset  this  necessary  inference 
from  the  phenomena  of  the  religion,  but  on  the  other  hand 
as  the  oldest  Semitic  settlement  it  would  be  very  natural 
for  it  to  become  the  head  of  a  kingdom. 

After  the  time  of  Khammurabi  (about  2300  B.C.)  Ea 
was  regarded  as  having  for  a  spouse  the  goddess  Damkina, 
"  the  lady  of  the  earth."  She  does  not  appear  in  the  older 

1  Cf.  Bev.  d*  assyriologie,  Vol.  IV,  pi.  i,  col.  ii,  11.  6,  7 ;  Eev.  semi- 
tique,  Vol.  V,  p.  67  ;  and  Radau,  Early  Babylonian  History,  p.  84. 

2  Rev.  d'assyriologie,  Vol.  IV,  pi.  ii,  col.  v,  11.  24,  25 ;  cf.  Thureau 
Dangin's  translation,  ibid.,  p.  49,  and  Radau's  op.  cit.,  p.  108. 

8  See  Hilprecbt,  OBL,  No.  87,  col.  i,  11.  17,  18  ;  cf.  Radau's  translation, 
op.  cit.,  p.  132. 

4  Cf.  Radau,  op.  cit.,  p.  80. 

6  Cf.  de  Sarzec,  Decouvertes,  pi.  8,  col.  iv,  1.  11 ;  cf.  KB.,  Vol.  IIP, 
p.  23. 

6  See  Winckler's  Altorientalische  Forschungen,  1st  ser.,  p.  547,  No.  8  ; 
and  Radau,  op.  cit. ,  p.  224. 


TRANSFORMATIONS  IN  BABYLONIA  199 

literature,1  and  is  clearly  simply  a  female  outgrowth  or 
counterpart  of  the  Ea  who  two  thousand  years  earlier  had 
become  a  male  deity,  and  who  had  as  the  necessities  of  the 
pantheons  required,  taken  on  more  specialized  functions. 
His  own  reflection  was  at  last  assigned  to  him  in  female 
form  for  a  spouse,  that  he  might  not  stand  alone. 

Returning  to  the  pantheon  of  Shirpurla  and  following 
another  mythological  clew,  we  are  led  by  the  statement  of 
Arad-Sin,  king  of  Larsa,2  that  Ishtar  (Nana)  of  Khallabi, 
which  was,  perhaps,  a  colony  of  Erim,3  is  the  daughter  of 
EN-ZU  or  Sin,  to  the  city  of  Ur,  of  which  Sin  was  the 
chief  deity.  In  the  older  texts  the  ideograms  for  Ur  and 
Sin  are  as  identical  as  those  for  Eridu  and  Ea.  Next  to 
Eridu,  Ur  was  the  most  southerly  of  the  ancient  cities 
of  Babylonia.  We  do  hear  in  mythological  poetry  of 
Surippak,  farther  to  the  south,  which  was  buried  in  the 
flood,  but  it  plays  no  part  in  the  history.  Ur  was  a  little 
to  the  westward  of  Eridu,*  and  is  represented  by  the  mod- 
ern mound  of  Mugheir.  It  was  a  very  old  city,  probably 
not  appreciably  younger  than  Eridu.  Its  kings  at  various 
times  held  sway  over  the  rest  of  Babylonia,  and  probably 
had  done  so  before  the  dawn  of  history,  for  we  find  Sin, 
the  god  of  Ur,  a  member  in  high  standing  of  the  pantheons 
of  other  cities  when  first  the  written  records  give  us 
glimpses  of  their  life.  Naram-Sin,  king  of  Agade  about 
3750  B.C.,  is  said  by  his  name  to  be  the  favorite  of  this 
god  of  Ur,  and  gives  us  other  evidence  that  Sin  was  wor- 
shipped beyond  the  borders  of  Ur.6  Lasirab6  of  Guti 

1  Cf .  Jastrow's  Religion  of  Babylonia  and  Assyria,  p.  64. 

8  PSBA.,  Vol.  XIII,  pp.  158,  159;  Davis,  PAOS.,  1895,  p.  ccxvi, 
evidently  quoted  from  memory  when  he  ascribed  this  statement  to 
Gndea. 

8  See  below. 

4  Cf .  Peters,  Nippur,  Vol.  II,  p.  296  ff .,  and  Rogers's  History  of  Baby- 
lonia and  Assyria,  Vol.  I,  p.  290. 

5  Cf.  Thureau  Dangin,  Comptes  rendus  de  Vacad.  inscr.,  1899,  p.  348, 
and  Radau.  op.  cit.,  p.  173  ft. 

•  Cf.  Winckler,  ZA.,  Vol.  IV,  p.  406,  and  Radan,  op.  cit.,  p.  175  ff. 


200  SEMITIC  ORIGINS 


and  Anu-banani J  of  Lulubi  had  both  worshipped  him  at 
a  still  earlier  time.  The  worship  of  this  god  also  appears 
at  Shirpurla,  where  he  was  probably  regarded  as  the  father 
of  Nana  or  Ishtar.2  This  fact,  like  the  myth  that  Nina 
was  the  daughter  of  Ea,  would  seem  to  give  a  hint  that 
Erim,  the  district  over  which  Nana  ruled  may  have  been 
colonized  from  Ur,  as  Nina  was  colonized  from  Eridu,  or  at 
least  that  there  was  some  close  connection  between  them. 
If  this  be  true,  we  must  suppose  that  Sin  was  at  the  first 
an  Ishtar  and  was  transformed  into  a  male  like  Ishtars  in 
other  places.  This  view  cannot  be  made  out  as  clearly 
as  the  cases  which  have  already  been  treated,  but  its 
probability  is  increased  by  the  following  considerations: 

1.  Dungi  calls  the  chief  deity  of  Ur  Nin-Ur,  "lady  of  Ur," 
and  his  "mistress,"  as  Ea  was  called  "lady  of  Eridu."8 

2.  An  old  hymn  to  the  moon  god4  attributes  to  him  the 
authorship  of  all  fertility  in  a  way  quite  explicable  if  he 
had  first  been  the  chthonic  mother  goddess,  but  which 
would  be  meaningless  were  he  simply  a  personification  of 
the  moon.     He  is  in  this  hymn  called  "  lord  of  increase," 
"  the  begetter  of  everything,"  "  the  begetter  of  gods  and 
men,"  the  "  maintainer  of  the  life  of  the  world,"  the  one 
"  at  whose  command  vegetation  is  created,"  5  etc.     These 
are  all  epithets  not  only  befitting  Ishtar,  but  which  in 
another  old  hymn  are  most  of  them  actually  applied  to 
her.6     3.  Throughout  the  hymn  and  in  other  texts  Sin  is 
constantly  called  "  father,"  7  which  would  be  very  natural 
if  he  had  grown  out  of  a  mother  goddess.     4.  His  symbol 

1  Cf.  Recueil  de  traveaux,  Vol.  XIV,  pp.  100-106,  since  published  in 
Textes  elamites-semitiques,  andRadau,  op.  cit.,  p.  177. 

2  Cf.  Amiaud  in  Records  of  the  Past,  2d  ser.,  Vol.  I,  p.  67,  and  above 
p.  185. 

»  Cf.  Hilprecht,  OBI.,  No.  16,  and  Radau,  op.  cit.,  p.  224. 

*IVR.,  9. 

6  See  Jastrow,  Religion  of  Babylonia  and  Assyria,  pp.  303,  304. 

6  Cf.  Haupt,  ASKT.,  p.  116  ff.,  Zimmern,  Babylonische  Busspsalmen, 
p.  33  ff.,  and  Hebraica,  Vol.  X,  p.  15. 

7  See,  e.g.,  the  text  of  Nabu-na'id,  I  R.,  69,  and  KB.,  Vol.  Ill1,  p.  81  ff. 


TRANSFORMATIONS  IN  BABYLONIA  201 

was  the  ox.  He  is  called  in  the  hymn  (11.19,  20)  "the 
strong  bull  with  great  horns."  The  symbol  of  Ishtar,  as 
shown  on  an  old  seal,  was  the  cow,1  and  such  a  transforma- 
tion as  we  have  supposed  would  connect  the  two.  Simi- 
larly the  symbol  of  Ashtart  at  Tyre  was  a  cow,  that  of 
Baal  and  Yahwe  in  Canaan,  and  of  Athtar  in  South 
Arabia,  a  bull.2  We  cannot,  however,  press  this  con- 
sideration, since  the  bull  and  cow  are  found  as  divine 
symbols  in  many  agricultural  communities  where  there  is 
no  possibility  that  an  Ishtar  or  an  analogous  god  had  pre- 
ceded. There  can  be  no  doubt  though  that  a  large  Semitic 
element  entered  into  the  make-up  of  the  moon  god  of  Ur, 
but  the  possibility  that  that  Semitic  element  took  on  the 
bull  symbol  through  Sumerian  influence  must  be  recog- 
nized. The  fact  that  a  similar  conception  prevailed  on 
purely  Semitic  soil  in  southern  Arabia  renders,  however, 
the  supposition  of  Sumerian  influence  unnecessary.  5.  The 
ideogram  by  which  Sin  is  represented  in  many  Sumerian 
texts,  EN-ZU,  means  "  lord  of  knowledge,  or  of  might,  or 
of  wisdom,  or  of  increase,"  3  any  or  all  of  which  are  mean- 
ings which  would  naturally  spring  from  the  conceptions 
entertained  of  Ishtar. 

Perhaps  we  shall  get  more  light  on  this  matter  when 
Mugheir  is  excavated  and  its  earliest  texts  recovered,  but 
we  are  at  present  justified  in  regarding  Ur  as  a  city  pre- 
dominantly if  not  altogether  Semitic,  and  its  god  as  in 
large  degree  the  result  of  the  absorption  of  an  Ishtar,ior  more 
probably  simply  a  transformed  Semitic  goddess.  If  this  be 
the  real  origin  of  Sin,  the  development  must  have  been 
completed  very  early,  for  a  very  archaic  text4  dating  prob- 
ably from  before  5500  B.C.  seems  to  call  Sin  Ab,  "father." 

1  See  Scheil,  Eecueil  de  traveaux,  Vol.  XX,  p.  62. 

2Cf.  Hebraica,  Vol.  X,  p.  31,  ZDMG.,  Vol.  XXX,  p.  289  (cf.  He- 
braica,  Vol.  X,  p.  56)',  and  the  articles  "Bull"  and  "Calf,  Golden,"  in 
Hastings's  Dictionary  of  the  Bible,  Encyc.  Bib.,  and  Jewish  Encyc. 

8  Cf.  Brtinnow's  List,  Nos.  130-137. 

4  Cf.  below,  p.  213,  n.  6.  The  interpretation  of  the  tablet  is  as  yet 
tentative. 


202  SEMITIC  ORIGINS 


After  the  deity  of  Ur  had  been  identified  with  the 
moon,  the  hymns  and  prayers  addressed  to  him  are  largely 
occupied  with  praises  of  his  brightness  and  other  quali- 
ties which  were  suggested  by  the  brilliance  and  the 
movements  of  the  moon.1  In  the  pantheons  of  the  his- 
toric period  Sin,  like  other  gods,  was  called  the  son  of 
Enlil.2  This  resulted  probably  from  a  long  prehistoric 
hegemony  on  the  part  of  Nippur,  Enlil's  city,  of  which 
more  will  be  said  below.  Either  the  result  of  this  hege- 
mony, or  the  fact  that  Sin  was  a  younger  deity,  prevented 
him  from  ever  occupying  the  same  exalted  position  as 
Enlil,  or  even  as  Ea.  He  was  later  a  member  of  the 
second  triad  in  the  pantheons  of  Babylonia,  but  not  like 
the  others  of  the  first.8 

Taking  once  more  as  a  point  of  departure  a  mythologi- 
cal statement  from  the  pantheon  of  Shirpurla,  we  are  led 
by  the  myth  that  Ningirsu  was  the  son  and  warrior  of  Enlil 
to  consider  next  the  god  of  Nippur.4  In  antiquity  his 
shrine  at  Nippur  rivals  the  shrine  of  any  other  Babylonian 
god.5  Among  the  earliest  inscriptions  yet  published,  except 
such  as  the  Blau  Monuments,  are  some  by  a  certain  Enshag- 
kushanna,  lord  of  Kengi  or  Sumir,  who  before  4500  B.C. 
devoted  to  Enlil,  "  king  of  countries,"  the  spoil  of  his  vic- 
tories over  Kish.6  This  shows  that  even  at  that  remote 
period  Enlil  had  come  to  be  regarded  far  outside  the  con- 
fines of  Nippur  as  the  principal  god,  and  from  this  time 

1  See,  e.g.,  King's  Babylonian  Magic  and  Sorcery,  p.  5. 

2  Cf.  Ur-Gur,  I  R.,  1,  No.  6,  KB.,  Vol.  Ill1,  p.  79. 

8  The  inscriptions  of  the  kings  of  Ur  throw  little  light  on  the  character 
of  Sin  beyond  the  fact  that  he  was  regarded  as  a  king  (cf.  KB.,  Vol.  Ill1, 
pp.  77,  93).  The  moon  god  was  also  worshipped  at  Harran,  but  of  the 
origins  of  his  worship  there  we  as  yet  know  nothing.  Probably  much 
the  same  history  could  be  written  of  his  worship  there  as  that  which  we 
have  sketched  for  the  moon  god  of  Ur,  had  we  the  material. 

4  See  above,  p.  195  ff. 

6  Cf.  Hilprecht,  OBI.,  Vol.  I,  Ft.  2,  pp.  44-46,  and  Peters,  Nippur,  Vol. 
II,  p.  246. 

•  Cf.  Hilprecht,  OBI.,  Nos.  90-92;  Radau,  op.  cit.,  pp.  44,  45;  and 
Rogers,  History  of  Babylonia  and  Assyria,  Vol.  I,  p.  351  ff. 


TRANSFORMATIONS  IN  BABYLONIA  203 

onward  he  was  honored  by  all  worshippers,  of  whatever 
city,  more  than  any  other  god.1  Even  the  rulers  of  Shir- 
purla  made  their  own  god  Ningirsu  subject  to  him.  This 
fact  can,  I  think,  be  adequately  accounted  for  only  on  the 
supposition  that  Nippur  had  been  in  prehistoric  time  the 
head  of  a  kingdom  which  included  all  of  Babylonia. 

At  a  time  almost  as  early,  —  a  time  before  the  Sargonic 
period,  —  Enlil  had  a  female  spouse,  Ninlil.  Urzaguddu, 
a  king  of  Kish,2  and  Anu-banini,  of  Lulubi,3  both  wor- 
shipped this  pair,  and  in  later  times  they  are  often  grouped 
together. 

In  all  probability  there  is  in  the  Enlil  of  Nippur  a  large 
Sumerian  element.  The  worship  which  he  received  from 
men  of  all  cities  is  no  doubt  to  be  accounted  for  in  part  by 
the  political  supremacy  of  Nippur,  as  already  suggested,! 
but  in  part  too  by  the  fact  that  he  was  an  old  pre-Semitic  I 
god  of  the  soil.  Semites,  when  first  they  went  into  a  new 
country,  thought  it  necessary  as  late  as  the  eighth  century 
B.C.  to  learn  the  worship  of  the  god  of  the  land4  in  order 
to  reside  there  safely,  and  in  the  earlier  times  they  would 
have  this  feeling  in  still  larger  degree.  The  Semites  in 
coming  into  Babylonia  would  therefore  adopt,  in  some 
measure,  the  worship  of  its  native  gods  wherever  they 
settled,  while  they  kept  also  the  worship  of  their  own 
goddess.  If  this  foreign  worship  were  practically  unor- 
ganized, it  would  make  little  impression,  and  would  leave 
the  worship  of  the  mother  goddess  comparatively  pure; 
but  if  it  had  assumed  a  definite  form,  it  would,  in  fusing 

1  Cf .  Jastrow,  Eeligion  of  Babylonia  and  Assyria,  p.  52  ff. 

2  Cf.  Hilprecht,  OBI.,  No.  93,  and  Radau,  op.  cit.,  p.  125,  n.  1. 

»  Cf.  Becueil  de  traveaux,  Vol.  XIV,  pp.  100-106,  and  Radau,  op.  ct«., 
p.  177. 

*  See  2  Kgs.  1724-84 ;  cf.  also  Budde,  Religion  of  Israel  to  the  Exile, 
pp.  53-55.  An  instance  of  fusion,  not  altogether  dissimilar,  from  a  much 
later  time  is  found  in  an  Aramaic  inscription  of  the  second  century  B.C. 
from  Kappadocia,  published  in  Lidzbarski's  Ephemeris  fur  semitische 
Epigraphik,  p.  67,  which  represents  the  marriage  of  the  Persian  religion 
(din  MazdianiS)  to  the  god  Bel. 


204  SEMITIC   OKIGINS 


with  the  Semitic  cult,  considerably  modify  it.  At  Nippur 
—  assuming  a  Semitic  element  in  the  civilization  —  the 
cult  of  the  mother  goddess  appears  to  have  been  influenced 
by  such  a  foreign  element,  since  as  early  as  3800  B.C.  Enlil 
was  not  only  of  the  masculine  gender,  but  had  also  a  fe- 
male counterpart,  which  was  simply  his  own  reflection.  A 
transformation,  which  appears  not  to  have  been  complete 
at  Eridu  till  some  two  thousand  years  later,  seems  to  have 
occurred  at  Nippur  before  the  dawn  of  history.  The  pro- 
cess was  therefore  probably  hastened  by  fusion  with  a 
foreign  god.1 

When  our  written  records  begin,  the  Semites  appear  to 
be  everywhere  dominant  in  Babylonia ;  but,  as  we  have 
seen,  the  phenomena  of  the  religion  compel  us  to  postulate 
a  prehistoric  kingdom  of  Nippur,  which  dominated  much 
of  the  surrounding  country.  This  was  probably  a  Sumer- 
ian  kingdom,  into  which  in  its  later  years  a  large  Semitic 
element  was  infused.  If  Enlil  was  originally  a  Sumerian 
god,  and  Nippur  the  head  of  a  Sumerian  kingdom,  the  two 
forces,  religious  and  political,  were  then  present  which  in 
combination  would  give  Enlil  the  place  at  the  head  of  all 
the  pantheons  which  he  occupied  in  the  later  religious 
history. 

A  large  Semitic  element  also  entered  into  the  concep- 
tions of  Enlil  and  Ninlil  at  Nippur.  This  is  shown  by 
the  following  facts :  1.  A  great  variety  of  phallic  symbols 
were  found  at  Nippur  in  all  the  levels  of  the  mound  back 
to  4000  B.C.,  or  earlier.2  These  symbols  are  the  natural 
symbols  of  a  cult  like  the  Ishtar  cult,  but  do  not  grow  so 
naturally  out  of  a  purely  agricultural  civilization.  We 
cannot  go  astray,  therefore,  in  regarding  them  as  the  prod- 
uct of  a  Semitic  element  of  thought,  which  entered  into 
the  worship  and  life  at  Nippur. 

1  The  presence  of  a  non-Semitic  element  at  Nippur  is  confirmed  by  the 
faces  on  the  votive  tablet  of  Ur-Enlil,  which  is  of  about  the  same  age  as 
the  inscriptions  of  Enshagkushanna,  or  perhaps  a  little  older.     See  Hil- 
precht,  OB/.,  pi.  xvi,  and  Professor  Cope's  note,  ibid.,  Pt.  2,  p.  48,  n.  1. 

2  Peters,  Nippur,  Vol.  II,  p.  236  ff. 


TRANSFORMATIONS  IN  BABYLONIA  206 

An  old  bilingual  incantation  contains  the  following 
Sumerian  expressions:  AMA  A-A  dingir  EN-LIL,  and 
AMA  A-A  dingir  NIN-LIL,  i.e.  "the  mother-father 
Enlil,"  and  "the  mother-father  Ninlil."1  The  point  of 
this  expression  is  not  simply  that  Enlil  and  Ninlil  were 
thought  of  as  a  pair  of  parents,2  but  that  the  qualities  of 
father  and  mother  both  are  actually  attributed  to  both 
Enlil  and  Ninlil.3  This  points  to  the  presence  at  Nippur 
of  a  mother  goddess  who  for  a  time  almost  monopolized 
the  thoughts  of  the  worshippers,  and  who  was  gradually 
fused  with  a  masculine  deity,  with  the  result  that  for  a 
time,  as  in  Lugal tarsi's  inscription,4  both  masculine  and 
feminine  qualities  were  attributed  to  the  same  deity. 
Enlil  was,  therefore,  probably  originally  a  Sumerian  earth 
goddess,  who  by  the  warlike  character  of  his  worshippers 
was  transformed  to  a  god,  and  later  given  a  consort.  The 
confusion  of  sex  probably  did  not  last  as  long  as  in  the 
case  of  the  deities  Ea  and  Sin,  which  were  of  almost  pure 
Semitic  origin,  but  this  little  expression  in  the  incantation, 
a  fossil  from  past  strata  of  thought,  has  transmitted  to  us 
the  evidence  of  its  existence.  By  the  time  when  written 
records  began  Enlil  and  Ninlil  were  fairly  well  denned, 
though  even  then  a  Semite  sometimes  addressed  the  whole 
deity  under  the  name  of  Ninlil.5  Another  point,  though 
it  is,  as  we  have  seen,  indeterminate,  is  found  in  the  fact 
that  Enlil  and  Ninlil  are  in  an  old  bilingual  hymn  repre- 
sented under  the  symbols  of  an  ox  and  a  cow,  like  Sin  and 
Ishtar. 6 

i  IV  R.,  1,  col.  ii,  11.  23-28. 

*  Delitzsch,  Assyrisches  Worterbuch,  p.  20. 

8  Cf.  my  article  "An  Androgynous  Babylonian  Divinity,"  in  JAOS., 
Vol.  XXI,2  p.  186  fl. 

*  See  above,  p.  181. 

6  Cf.  Winckler's  Untersuchungen,  p.  157,  No.  9  ;  KB.,  Vol.  Ill,1  p.  69, 
and  Radau,  op.  eft.,  p.  37,  and  p.  125,  n. 

*  See  Reisner's  Sumerisch-babylonische  Hymnen  nach  Thontafeln  grie- 
chiscfier  Zeit  in  the   Berlin  Museum's  Miltheilungen,   Heft  X,   p.   19, 
11.  71-74  ;  cf.  the  translation  in  Dr.  Banks's  dissertation,  Sumerisch-baby- 
lonische Hymnen,  Leipzig,  1897,  p.  23. 


206  SEMITIC  ORIGINS 


The  fusion  of  Semitic  and  non-Semitic  elements  simply 
hastened,  as  has  been  pointed  out,  the  evolution  which  the 
processes  of  social  transformation  carried  on  more  slowly 
elsewhere. 

The  commanding  place  which  Enlil  held  in  the  Baby- 
lonian pantheon  in  the  earliest  period  is  illustrated  by  the 
way  in  which  Enshagkushanna  before  4500  B.C.  presented 
to  him,  as  noted  above,  the  spoil  of  his  war  with  Kish, 
although  so  far  as  appears  the  seat  of  Enshagkushanna's 
government  was  in  the  south;  and  also,  by  the  way- 
Eannadu  of  Shirpurla  some  three  centuries  later  claims 
that  Enlil  (not  Ningursu)  gave  him  victory  over  the 
people  of  Gishban.1 

i  The  view  we  have  been  led  to  take  of  these  gods  throws 
light  on  the  place  which  Enlil  and  Ea  afterwards  held  as 
{  the  two  most  prominent  members  of  the  triad,  Anu,  Bel 
(Enlil),  and  Ea.  In  this  triad,  Bel  was  the  god  of  the 
earth,  and  Ea  of  the  deep.  Anu  was  in  part  an  abstrac- 
tion added  at  a  later  time  to  represent  the  third  most  obvi- 
ous part  of  the  universe.  Bel  (Enlil),  the  old  god  of  the 
country,  though  largely  permeated  by  Semitic  conceptions, 
naturally  took  the  lead,  because  the  Sumerian  kingdom 
antedated  the  Semitic ;  while  Ea,  the  oldest  Semitic  god 
in  Babylonia,  whose  coming  brought  the  artificial  cul- 
ture of  the  date-palm  and  infused  new  elements  into  the 
civilization,  whose  home  was  on  the  shore  of  the  great 
water,  assumed  naturally  a  place  of  importance  next  to 
Bel.  When  the  two  were  united  in  the  first  triad,  the  lead- 
ing Sumerian  and  the  leading  Semitic  deities,  whose  hosts 
had  no  doubt  in  the  earlier  days  struggled  in  many  a 
bloody  conflict,  were  brought  into  harmonious  accord. 

Because  of  a  possible  connection  with  the  pantheon  of 

*  CTBM.,  Pt.  VII,  No.  23580,  col.  ii,  11.  1-7.  It  reads :  (1)  E-AN- 
NA-DU  MEN  (2)  SA  UMUN  GAL  (3)  dtngtr  EN-LIL-LAL  (4)  E-NA 
SUM  (5)  NAM-E-NA-TA  KUD  (6)  GAL  GISH-BAN-to-KID  (7)  E- 
AN-NA-DU-RA,  i.e.,  "Eannadu  am  I.  The  temple  of  the  great  lord 
Enlil,  its  greatness  I  established.  On  account  of  its  greatness  he  subdued 
the  men  of  Gishban  to  Eannadu." 


TRANSFORMATIONS  IN  BABYLONIA  207 


Shirpurla,  the  next  deity  to  be  oonridergd  is 
duk  ofBabykm,  with  his  spouse  fiflT"""*  Ball  l  and 
Hommel^  have  suggested,  in  consequence  of  a  passage  in 
an  old  hymn  which  identifies  Gishgalla  with  Babylon,3 
that  the  Gishgalla  of  the  kingdom  of  Shirpurla  was  really 
the  same  place  as  the  Babylon  of  later  history.  As 
Amiaud  pointed4  out,  Gudea  speaks  of  the  whole  of  Shir- 
purla as  a  city,5  a  fact  which  precludes  the  possibility  that 
one  of  its  quarters  was  as  far  away  as  Babylon.  The 
theory  also  encounters  other  objections  which  are  equally 
fatal  to  it.  It  is  probable  that  the  ideogram  which  Hom- 
mel  and  Amiaud  read  Gishgalla  should  be  read  Erim.6 
Gishgalla  is  probably  another  sign.7  Eannadu,  about 
4100  B.C.,  tells  us  of  his  conquest  over  a  city,  the  name 
of  which  he  represents  by  this  latter  ideogram,  and  which 
is  probably,  therefore,  to  be  read  Gishgalla.8  As  he  calls 
himself  king  of  Shirpurla,  it  was  clearly  a  town  outside 
of  that  place.  He  gives  us  no  indication  of  where  it  was 
situated,  but  from  the  fact  that  the  ideogram  Gishgalla 
also  denoted  in  later  times  the  direction  "  south,"  9  it  is 

1  PSBA.,  Vol.  XV,  p.  63  ff. 

*  PSBA.,  Vol.  XV,  p.  108  ff. 
«  IV  R.,  46. 

*  Records  of  the  Past,  New  Series,  Vol.  I,  p.  43. 

6  De  Sarzec's  Decouvertes,  pi.  14,  col.  i,  11.  14,  15. 

•  Cf.  Thureau  Dangin,  Recherches,  No.  359.     While  he  there  reads  the 
sign  GISHGAL,  he  reads  ERIM  in  Revue  semitique,  Vol.  V,  p.  67.    As  he 
himself  points  out  (Recherches,  No.  361),  another  sign  is  really  equivalent 
to  GISHGAL,  and  the  two  signs  cannot  be  identical.    This  one,  as  Jensen 
suggested  (KB.,  Vol.  Ill1,  p.  3  ff.),  is  probably  to  be  read  ERIM  (Briin- 
now's  List,  No.  949)  ,  at  least  provisionally. 

7  Thureau  Dangin's  Recherches,  No.  361  ,  and  Brunnow's  List  ,  No.  938. 

8  Cf.  the  four  texts  in  CTBM.,  Pt.  IX,  pis.  1  and  2,  col.  ii  of  each  text  ; 
cf.  also  Galet  A,  Rev.  d'assyr.,  Vol.  IV,  pi.  1,  col.  iii,  11.  17-19  ;  Cf  .  Thureau 
Dangin  in  Rev.  sem.,  Vol.  V,  p.  68,  and  Radau,  op.  cit.,  p.  84.     The 
passage  reads:    TU-SU-BI  SUM  kur  ELAM  Jet,  TU-SU-BI  SUM  GIS- 
GALLA  ki,  TU-SU-BI  SUM  GIS-BAN  ki,  TU-SU-BI  SUM  URU  ki; 
i.e.,  "  Into  his  power  was  given  Elam  ;  into  his  power  was  given  Gishgalla  ; 
into  his  power  was  given  Gishban  ;  into  his  power  was  given  Ur." 

•  See  Brunnow's  List,  No.  947.     It  probably  acquired  this  meaning,  as 
the  word  Negebh  did  in  Hebrew,  by  being  a  place  southward  of  some 


208  SEMITIC   ORIGINS 


altogether  improbable  that  Gishgalla  was  as  far  north 
as  Babylon.  It  may  be  that  Babylon  was  a  colony  of  this 
Gishgalla.  That  would  afford  only  an  indirect  connection 
with  Shirpurla,  —  Gishgalla  being  not  a  part  of  Shirpurla 
like  Erim,  but  an  independent  town  conquered  by  Shir- 
purla in  the  historical  period. 

It  is  clear,  therefore,  that  Hommers  identification  of 
Babylon  with  Gishgalla,  even  if  interpreted  to  mean  that 
Babylon  was  a  colony  of  the  latter,  will  throw  little  light 
on  the  nature  of  the  god  Marduk,  since  we  have  no  infor- 
mation whatever  as  to  the  gods  of  Gishgalla.  If  there  be 
any  connection  between  the  two,  the  deity  of  Babylon 
might  throw  light  on  the  religion  of  Gishgalla,  but  not 
that  of  Gishgalla  upon  Babylon. 

From  other  considerations,  however,  it  can  be  shown  that 
Marduk  is  in  all  probability  a  Spmitio  y^.  yyplyy^  l|kq  foe 
Semitic  gods  already  discussedr  out  of  a  preceding  Islitar. 
The  considerations  which  support  this  view  are  as  follows :  — 

1.  Marduk  is  called  in  the  hymns  "the  life  giver,"1 
"  possessor  of  the  foundation  of  life,"2  and  is  asked  to  give 
life.3  In  other  words,  he  is,  like  Ishtar,  a  deity  of  life. 
2.  Nebuchadnezzar  tells  us4  that  the  Zagmukhu,  which 
in  the  time  of  Gudea  was,  as  we  have  seen,  a  festival  of 
Bau,  was  at  Babylon  a  festival  of  Marduk.  It  is  not 
necessary  to  suppose  with  Jastrow 5  that  it  was  transferred 
to  Marduk  ;  this  festival  of  the  yeaning  time  in  spring  is 
another  link  connecting  Marduk  with  the  Ishtar  from 
which  he  sprang.6  3.  Marduk  comes  first  to  our  knowl- 
edge in  the  inscriptions  of  Sumula-ilu  and  Khammurabi, 

other  important  place  in  Babylonia,  so  that  Gishgallaward  came  to  mean 
southward. 

iIV  R.,  29,  No.  1,  Rev.  11.  5,  6  (cf.  Sayce,  Hibbert  Lectures,  p.  502). 

3  Ibid.,  Obv.  1.  38  (cf.  Sayce,  ibid.,  p.  501). 

«IV  R.,  18,  No.  2,  Rev.  1.  12  (cf.  Sayce,  op.  cit.,  p.  489). 

*I  R.,  54,  col.  ii,  54  ff.  (cf.  Jensen,  Kosmologie,  p.  84  ff.,  and  KB., 
Vol.  IIP,  p.  15). 

6  Religion  of  Babylonia  and  Assyria,  pp.  121,  631. 

8  See  above,  p.  109  ff. 


TRANSFORMATIONS  IN  BABYLONIA  209 

kings  who  belonged,  as  all  recognize,  to  a  Semitic  dynasty. 
Their  god  would  be  a  Semitic  god,  so  that  it  is  in  conse- 
quence more  than  probable  that  Marduk  is  developed  from 
the  Semitic  mother  goddess  like  other  Semitic  deities. 
Fjom  the  timft^  nf   Kha/mTrmraj^  fl/ford^  yaa  thft  ftt|i«f 

deity  in  the  eves  of  all  Babylonians.  They  worshipped 
other  gods  as  the  inhabitants  of  other  cities  had  done,  but 
unlike  them,  they  practically  placed  Marduk,  not  Enlil, 
first.  Jastrow  has  already  pointed  out1  how,  in  conse- 
quence of  this,  Marduk  absorbed  in  time  many  of  the 
attributes  of  Bel  (Enlil)  and  even  of  Ea.  This  movement 
perhaps  had  its  origin  in  a  myth  that  Marduk  was  the  son 
of  Ea.3  Sayce  infers  from  this3  that  Babylon  was  origi- 
nally a  colony  of  Eridu.  This  can  hardly  have  been  the 
case,  for,  as  will  be  pointed  out  below,4  the  myth  was 
probably  in  the  first  place  a  myth  of  Nabu  which  Marduk 
absorbed.  The  name  Marduk  is  with  some  probability  1 1 
explained  as  "young"  or  "early  sun,"6  i.e.,  "child  of  the  I! 
day,"6  and  perhaps  arose  from  the  association  of  the 
primitive  Semitic  goddess  at  Babylon  with  the  sun. 

Marduk  had  a  consort,  Sarpanitum,  who  first  appears  in 
the  reign  of  Sumula-ilu  about  2360  B.C.7  Her  name, 
according  to  Delitzsch,8  comes,  like  that  of  Marduk,  from 
her  solar  character,  and  means  "silver  brightness." 
In  the  historical  inscriptions  she  appears  to  have  been 

1  Religion  of  Babylon  and  Assyria,  p.  117  ff. 

8Cf.  Winckler,  Untersuchungen,  p.  140,  and  KB.,  Vol.  HI1,  p.  131. 

*  Hibbert  Lectures,  p.  104. 

*  See  below,  p.  212,  and  on  the  subjugation  of  Nabu  to  Marduk,  Jastrow, 
op.  cit.,  cf.  126  ff. 

6  Sayce,  op.  cit. ,  p.  98,  Jensen,  Kosmologie,  p.  88,  and  Jastrow,  op.  cit., 
p.  119. 

6  Delitzsch,  BA.,  Vol.  II,  p.  623  n. 

7  King's  Letters  and  Inscriptions  of  Hammurabi,  No.  101,  col.  i,  1.  41 ; 
cf.  Vol.  Ill,  p.  218  ff. 

8  Ibid.,  Contra,  cf.  Hale"vy,  Eecherches  critique,  p.  260,  and  Muss- 
Arnolt  in  JBL.,  Vol.  XI,  p.  166.     In  consequence  of  a  folk  etymology 
the  name  of  the  goddess  was  sometimes  written  Ziru-bani-ti,  or  "creator 
of  seed."     (Cf.  II  R.,  67  u. ) 


210  SEMITIC  ORIGINS 


little  more  than  a  reflection  of  Marduk,  but  that  she  was 
originally  more  than  that  appears  from  the  fact  that 
Nebuchadnezzar  appeals  to  her  as  the  goddess  of  child- 
bearing.1  That  she  always  played  a  large  role  in  the 
popular  imagination  is  shown  by  the  fact  that  in  the 
middle  Babylonian  period  the  image  of  a  nude  goddess 
holding  her  breasts  was  very  popular  in  Babylonian  art.2 
These  are  in  all  probability  representations  of  Sarpanit, 
and  indicate  that  in  the  rise  of  the  god  Marduk  the  femi- 
nine side  of  the  old  mother  goddess  lost  nothing  of  her 
popularity.  This  is  further  confirmed  by  what  Herodotus 
and  Strabo  tell  us  of  her  service  by  the  women  of  Baby- 
lon.3 Sarpanitum  was  then  the  feminine  counterpart  of 
Marduk,  as  Damkina  was  the  feminine  counterpart  of  Ea. 
The  pair  at  Babylon,  as  at  Eridu,  were  probably  produced 
by  the  differentiation  of  the  old  mother  goddess  Ishtar. 
If  Babylon  were  a  colony  of  Gishgalla,  this  conclusion 
would  involve  the  view  that  the  latter  city  was  also  a 
Semitic  settlement. 

Another  god  the  origin  of  whose  worship  may  with 
some  plausibility  be  traced  through  Shirpurla  is  Nabu, 
the  god  of  the  city  Borsippa.  Hommel  has  suggested4 
that  the  Kinnir,  which  is  equated  with  Borsippa  in  the 
hymn  which  calls  Babylon  Gishgalla,5  is  the  same  town  as 
that  mentioned  in  the  inscription  of  Ur-Bau  as  Kinunir,6 
which  Hommel  declares  was  situated  in  Gishgalla.  The 
enthusiasm  of  a  discoverer  has  here  led  Hommel  into  a 
slight  error,  for  Ur-Bau  does  not  say  that  Kinunir  was 

1  Oppert,  Expedition  en  Mesopotamie,  Vol.  II,  p.  295 ;  Hebraica,  Vol. 
X,  pp.  18,  19. 

2  Cf.  Ward  in  American  Journal  of  Archaeology,  1900,  pp.  291,  292. 

8  See  Herodotus,  Bk.  I,  199;  Strabo,  Bk.  XVI,  1,  20 ;  Apocryphal 
Epistle  of  Jeremiah,  vs.  42,  43 ;  cf.  Hebraica,  Vol.  X,  pp.  20,  21,  and 
JBL.,  Vol.  X,  p.  79  ff. 

*PSBA.,  Vol.  XV,  p.  108. 

6 IV  R.,  46,  cf.  11.  15,  16. 

6  De  Sarzec's  Decouvertes,  pi.  8,  col.  vi,  11.  9-11.  Cf.  Amiaud  in  Eecords 
of  the  Past,  New  Ser.,  Vol.  I,  p.  77,  and  Jensen,  KB.,  Vol.  Ill1,  pp. 
24,  25. 


TRANSFORMATIONS   IN   BABYLONIA  211 

situated  in  Gishgalla,  but  in  Girsu.  It  is  natural  to  see  in 
Kinnir  or  Borsippa  a  colony  from  Girsu.  The  emigrants 
from  Kinunir,  which  would  seem  to  have  been  a  portion 
or  suburb  of  Girsu,  would  of  course  take  with  them  the 
worship  of  their  deity.  Ur-Bau  tells  us  that  the  deity  of 
Kinunir  was  the  goddess  Dumuzizuab1  (z'.e.,  "the  living 
child  of  the  abyss,"  or  "the  Tammuz  of  the  deep").  He 
makes  it  clear  that  she  was  a  goddess  by  calling  her  "lady 
of  Kinunir."2 

Now  if  we  take  Hommel's  identification  to  mean  that 
Borsippa  was  a  colony  from  this  portion  of  Girsu,  then  the 
goddess  "  Tammuz  of  the  deep  "  must  have  been  the  real 
deity  of  Borsippa  out  of  which  Nabu  was  developed  by 
processes  with  which  we  are  already  familiar.  That  Nabu 
had  some  such  genesis  is  made  probable  by  an  old  hymn 
which  makes  him  a  water  god  and  a  god  of  fertility,  such 
as  we  have  seen  Ishtar  to  be.3  This  view  is  further  con- 
firmed by  a  list  of  gods  4  in  which  Nabu  is  identified  with 
a  deity  of  the  island  Dilmun,  an  island  in  the  Persian  Gulf 
near  Bahrein.6  It  would  seem,  therefore,  that  the  people 
of  Kinunir  brought  their  goddess  from  one  of  the  islands 
of  the  Persian  Gulf,  to  which  they  had  previously  mi- 
grated from  Arabia,  and  settled  in  or  near  Girsu,  and  that 
thence  a  band  moved  onward  to  Borsippa.  The  settlement 
at  Girsu  was  made  before  the  time  of  Eannadu,  for  he  was 
acquainted  with  their  deity.6 

The  proof  that  Nabu  originated  in  this  way  is  only  enough 
to  furnish  a  basis  for  conjecture,  but  in  the  light  of  the  an- 
alogies we  have  traced  elsewhere  it  seems  highly  probable. 

1  De  Sarzec,  ibid. 

2  Jensen's  idea  that  Dumuzizuab  must  be  a  god  (KB.,  Vol.  HI1,  p.  25  n.) 
is,  if  the  line  of  reasoning  in  the  preceding  pages  be  at  all  correct, 
groundless. 

»  IV  R.,  14,  No.  3, 11.  10-14.     Cf.  Sayce,  ffibbert  Lectures,  p.  448. 

*  II  R.,  60,  30  ;  cf.  also  64,  66,  and  Briinnow's  List,  5372. 

*  Cf.  Sayce,  Hibbert  Lectures,  p.  114,  n.  1. 

6  See  Revue  d' assyriologie,  Vol.  IV,  pi.  1,  col.  ii,  1.  9;  cf.  also  Revue 
semitique,  Vol.  V,  p.  67,  and  Radau,  Early  Babylonian  History,  p.  84. 


212  SEMITIC   ORIGINS 


The  name  "Living  child  of  the  deep"  —  Dumuzizuab, 
—  would  naturally  suggest  a  connection  of  this  goddess, 
and  hence  of  Nabu,  with  Ea.  This  probably  took  first  the 
form  of  a  myth  which  made  Nabu  the  son  of  Ea,  which 
would  be  "  child  of  the  deep  "  put  into  slightly  different 
terms  —  a  myth  which,  as  has  been  suggested,  was  proba- 
bly afterward  appropriated  by  Marduk.1  It  was  probably 
this  genesis  of  Nabu  and  his  association  with  Ea,  the  god 
of  wisdom,  which  afterward  made  Nabu  the  god  of  learn- 
ing and  wisdom  to  the  Babylonians  and  Assyrians. 

Nabu  does  not  appear  in  extant  inscriptions  till  the  time 
of  Khammurabi,2  and  Jastrow  supposes  that  that  monarch 
tried  to  suppress  his  worship  in  favor  of  that  of  Marduk.3 
The  date  of  his  appearance  and  his  functions  as  god  of 
fertility  and  wisdom  all  point  to  such  an  origin  as  has 
here  been  supposed.4  His  consort  Tashmit  is  of  still 
later  origin,  and  is  clearly  only  a  feminine  counterpart 
of  Nabu.  Her  name  means  "hearing"  or  "revelation," 
and  is  derived  from  Nabu's  function  as  god  of  wisdom. 
Her  origin  is  therefore  quite  parallel  to  that  of  Damkina 
from  Ea. 

The  worship  of  the  ggd  Shamash,  as  we  know  it  from 


the  inscriptions,  was  the  native  religion  of  two  cities  of 
ancient  Babylonia,  Larsa  and  Agade,  or  Sippar.     Of  the 


details  of  this  worship  in  either  city  we  know  very  little. 
At  Larsa,  Ur-Gur,  king  of  Ur  about  2500  B.C.,  repaired  the 
temple  of  Shamash,6  as  did  also  Khammurabi  of  Babylon 
some  two  hundred  years  later.6  The  latter  calls  the  Sha- 

1  Above,  p.  209. 

2  KB.,  Vol.  IIP,  p.  123. 

8  See  Jastrow' s  Religion  of  Babylonia  and  Assyria,  p.  125  ff. 

*  Jensen's  endeavor  to  make  Nabu  a  sun  god  (Kosmologie,  p.  239)  cer- 
tainly does  not  explain  all  the  functions  ascribed  to  him.  The  goddess 
Erua,  whom  Sayce  (Hibbert  Lectures,  p.  Ill  ff.)  connects  with  Sarpanitand 
Tashmit,  and  whom  Jastrow  (op.  cit.,  p.  130)  supposes  to  be  the  older  con- 
sort of  Nabu,  is  probably  the  goddess  Dumuzizuab  under  another  name. 

6  Cf.  I  R.,  No.  7  ;  also  KB.,  Vol.  Ill1,  p.  79. 

6  See  King's  Letters  and  Inscriptions  of  Hammurabi,  No.  62. 


TRANSFORMATIONS  IN  BABYLONIA  213 

mash  of  Larsa  "lord  of  heaven  and  earth  "  and  "shepherd  " l 
—  expressions  also  used  of  the  other  Shamash.  It  is  hard 
to  say  whether  the  worship  at  Larsa  or  at  Agade  is  the 
older.  If,  as  Jastrow  supposes,2  antiquity  and  fame  went 
hand  in  hand  in  Babylonia,  he  is  right  in  the  view  that  the 
palm  of  antiquity  should  be  ascribed  to  Agade.  In  this 
latter  city  we  find  the  worship  of  Shamash  and  Ishtar  side 
by  side  in  the  inscriptions  of  Sargon  of  Agade,  about 
3800  B.C.3  At  that  early  time  the  worship  of  Shamash 
had  begun  to  overshadow  somewhat  the  worship  of  Ishtar, 
for  we  find  Sargon  making  offerings  and  appeals  to  him  in 
which  the  goddess  is  not  included.4 

A  very  archaic  tablet  in  the  E.  A.  Hoffmann  collection 
at  the  General  Theological  Seminary  in  New  York,  which 
records  the  gift  of  a  field  to  a  deity,  which  has  not  yet  been 
identified,  speaks  of  Shamash  as  "  the  lady  who  pours  forth 
brightness,  the  mistress."  There  is  nothing  in  the  tablet 
except  a  sign  which  is  still  unidentified  to  indicate  whence 
the  tablet  comes  ;  we  cannot  tell,  therefore,  whether  it  re- 
fers to  the  Shamash  of  Agade  or  of  Larsa.  If,  however,  I 
interpret  it  correctly  (a  matter  of  some  doubt  in  the  case 
of  writing  as  old  as  any  yet  discovered),  it  not  only  records 
a  time  when  Shamash  was  a  goddess,  but  shows  that  even 
then  another  deity,  which  is  possibly  Ishtar,  was  worshipped 
beside  her.5  Analogy  makes  it  probable  that  Shamash  was 

1  Cf .  King,  ibid. ,  1.  2.      2  Religion  of  Babylonia  and  Assyria,  p.  70. 

8  Cf.  Hilprecht's  OBI.,  No.  1,  and  Radau,  op.  cit.,  p.  167  ff. 

4  Cf.  PSBA.,  Vol.  VII,  p.  66,  and  KB.,  Vol.  in1,  pp.  100,  101 ;  also 
Hilprecht,  OBI.,  No.  2,  and  Radau,  op.  cit.,  p.  170. 

6  The  inscription  which  is  unpublished  I  interpret  as  follows :  — 

Col.      I,  1.  IIIMV  GANA  DUK-KA  DINGIR  ?-KI  LAG 
2.  SAL-LAL-TUR 

Col.    II,  1.    IIIMVICL  URTU-NI-A  SIG  LIK-A 

2.  IIIMVICL  GAL  PI  NER-A  DA-KU  GUR  DIMMENA 
BABBAR  NIN-A  TAB  BAR  UMUN(?) 

*• *•  "3005  Bur  of  a  field,  (a  bed)  of  clay(?),  to  the  god  of  ?  presented 
'•Sallaltur.  n*1-  36,050  cubits  in  its  Akkadward  side,  the  lower  (side), 
from  the  beginning  ;  *•  36,050  cubits  running  along  the  breadth  of  the  zig- 
gurat  to  the  side  of  the  great  terrace  of  Shamash,  the  lady,  who  pours 
forth  brightness,  the  mistress(?)."  [Continued  on  p.  214.] 


214  SEMITIC  ORIGINS 


here  a  goddess  beside  whom  Ishtar  was  worshipped. 
Whether  Shamash  was  a  Sumerian  goddess  and  Ishtar  a 
Semitic,  we  have  no  means  of  determining.  Shamash  may 
have  been  an  epithet  of  Ishtar  which  hardened,  as  epithets 
so  often  did  afterward,  into  a  separate  deity  ;  or  two  tribes, 
a  Semitic  and  a  Sumerian,  may  have  composed  the  commu- 
nity from  which  our  inscription  comes,  and  Shamash  may 
have  been  a  Sumerian  corn  goddess,  though  this  latter  sup- 
position is  not  probable.  However  this  may  be,  Shamash 
in  later  times  was  always  a  god.  Perhaps  the  Semitic 
settlement  at  Agade  was  very  old,  or  the  foreign  influence 
there  was  very  strong.  At  all  events,  by  the  time  of  Sargon 
of  Agade,  about  3800  B.C.,  Shamash  was  a  masculine  deity. 
Although  Ishtar  appears  by  his  side  in  some  of  the  inscrip- 
tions of  Sargon,1  yet  he  could  invoke  Shamash  without 
mentioning  her.  Probably,  therefore,  Shamash  was  a 
Semitic  deity.  The  fact  that  we  have  found  the  worship 
of  Shamash  at  Shirpurla,  also  a  Semitic  community,  points 
in  the  same  direction.2 

At    times   his   worship    so  overshadowed   that  of  the 
goddess  that  Khammurabi  as  well    as  Sargon  mentions 
Shamash  alone,3  but  an  old  hymn,  in  which  the  goddess  is 
called  Malkatu,4  shows  us  the  worship  of  the  two  in  con- 
Col.  Ill,  1.   IIIMVIC  E  BABBAR  LUd  AB  TAB  BAR 

2.  IIIMVICL  BURU  KUR  IR(?)  DU(?)  BAD 

3.  LIK-A  GAR-A 

4.  GIR(?)  SAG(?) 

m>  *•  "  36,000  cubits  (along)  the  temple  of  Shamash,  the  messenger  of  the 
father  who  pours  forth  brightness  (i.e.  Sin) ;  *•  36,050  cubits  below(?) 
the  mountain  where  the  abode(?)  of  Ishtar  (??)  is, 8-  to  the  beginning ;  for 
making  brick.  *•  May  he  strengthen,  may  he  bless  !  " 

1  Cf.  OBI.,  No.  1,  and  Radau,  op.  cit.,  168,  169. 

2  See,  for  example,  Eannadu  in  De  Sarzec's  Decouvertes,  pi.  4,  bis,  col. 
VII,  11.  7,  8. 

8  See  KB.,  Vol.  Ill1,  pp.  106-126,  and  Radau,  op.  cit.,  p.  169  ff. 

4  See  Haupt's  ASKT.,  p.  122  ff.  For  translations,  Zimmern's  Babylo- 
nische  Busspsalmen,  p.  51  ff.,  and  Hebraica,  Vol.  X,  p.  24  ff.  On  the  ap- 
plication of  the  name  Malkatu  to  the  goddess,  see  Schrader's  article  in 
ZA.,  Vol.  HI,  p.  353  ft 


TRANSFORMATIONS  IN  BABYLONIA  215 

junction,  and  in  the  inscriptions  of  Nabonidos  we  see  them 
at  the  close  of  Babylonian  history  reigning  as  a  united  pair.1 
Between  these  extremes  various  modifications  may  have 
taken  place.  One  of  them  we  can  trace.  In  the  inscrip- 
tion of  Nabu-apal-iddin  (about  880  B.C.),  Malik  and  Bu- 
nini 2  appear  to  be  the  attendants  of  Shamash,  who  rules 
above  and  apart  from  them.  Here  Malik  was  no  doubt 
originally  an  epithet  of  Shamash,  while  Bunini  is  perhaps 
another  name  for  Ishtar. 

Ishtar  at  Agade  probably  never  quite  lost  her  identity 
in  Shamash,3  although  at  times  she  could  be  ignored. 
It  was  perhaps  this  goddess  to  whom  the  name  Nin- 
Akkad,  or  "Lady  of  Accad,"  is  given  in  an  old  list  of 
deities,4  though  it  is  possible  that  that  title  is  a  sur- 
vival from  the  time  when  "  Lady "  was  an  epithet  of 
Shamash. 

Not  far  east  of  Babylon,  where  the  modern  mound  of 
Tell-Ibrahim  now  is,  lay  the  ancient  city  of  Gadua  or 
Kutu  6  (Kutha),  of  which  the  tutelary  deity  was  Nergjjl.6 
His  principal  temple  was  called  Eshidlam.  How  old  the 
city  was  we  have  no  means  of  knowing.  The  worship  of 
Nergal  first  comes  to  light  in  the  inscriptions  of  Dungi, 
king  of  Ur  about  2450  B.C.,  who  repaired  his  temple.7 
The  god  was  then  known  as  Shidlam-ta-e-a,8  or  "  the  god 
who  goes  forth  from  Eshidlam,"  a  name  which  appears 
later  in  the  asipu  texts  published  by  Zimmern.9  The 

i  Cf.  V  R.,  66,  col.  i,  1.  35  (also  KB.,  Vol.  IIP,  pp.  110,  111),  and  col. 
ii,  1.  12  (KB.  as  above,  pp.  112,  113)  ;  also  V  R.  61,  col.  i,  11.  7  and  46  ; 
coL  ii,  11.  6  and  40  (cf.  Hebraica,  Vol.  X,  p.  25). 

*  Cf.  V  R.,  60,  KB.,  Vol.  Ill1,  pp.  174-183,  and  Jastrow's  Religion  of 
Babylonia  and  Assyria,  p.  176  ff. 

3  See  the  evidence  collected  in  Hebraica,  Vol.  X,  pp.  24,  25. 

*  See  III  R.,  66,  col.  iii,  1.  26,  rev.  col.  v,  11.  27,  35. 

6  See  Delitzsch's  Wo  lag  das  Parodies  f  p.  218. 
«  Cf.  II  R.  61,  col.  ii,  1.  63,  and  2  Kgs.  1780. 

7  CTBM.,  Pt.  IX,  No.  35389,  and  KB.,  Vol.  HP,  pp.  80,  81. 

*  Cf.  Brtinnow,  List,  No.  7873. 

9  Cf.  his  Beitrage  zur  Kentniss  der  babylonischen  Religion,  pp.  149, 
151,  159,  166,  169,  and  the  corresponding  plates  of  cuneiform  text. 


216  SEMITIC  ORIGINS 


temple  was  also  repaired  at  another  time  by  Sin-gamil, 
another  king  of  Ur.1 

When  Nergal  appears  in  the  syncretistic  pantheons  of 
later  times,  he  had  been  assigned  the  twofold  function  of 
god  of  the  underworld  and  the  god  of  death-bringing  war 
and  pestilence.2  Jensen,3  who  is  followed  by  Jastrow,4 
believes  that  Nergal  was  originally  a  god  of  the  glowing 
flame  of  the  sun,  and  that  his  destructive  functions  are  to 
be  attributed  to  that  fact.  As  the  god  of  destruction,  they 
hold  that  he  became  the  god  of  the  underworld. 

It  may  well  be  doubted  whether  this  view  will  satisfac- 
torily explain  all  the  facts.  The  solar  explanation  of 
deities  which  are  ancient  are,  I  believe,  never  able  to  lead 
us  to  the  most  primitive  character  of  the  god.  Men 
thought  of  objects  on  the  earth,  and  identified  their  gods 
with  them  before  they  thought  of  identifying  them  with 
anything  in  the  far-off  sky.  If  Nergal  was  the  deity  of 
Kutha  in  that  early  time  when  each  city  was  independent 
and  had  its  own  god,  it  is  certainly  unlikely  that  they 
then  identified  him  with  the  glowing  heat  of  the  sun.  It 
is  much  more  probable  that  he  was  then  an  agricultural 
god,  a  deity  of  the  soil  and  the  giver  of  fertility.  When 
the  gods  of  the  various  cities  were  grouped  in  a  pantheon, 
Enlil  of  Nippur,  who  was  also  a  god  of  the  soil,  took  pre- 
cedence of  Nergal,  no  doubt  because  Nippur  was  a  more 
powerful  city.  Nergal  could  of  course  not  be  assigned 
the  same  functions,  but  was  still  connected  with  the  earth, 
though  limited  in  his  sphere  by  being  assigned  to  the 
underworld.  As  lord  of  the  region  of  the  dead  he  would 
naturally  be  conceived  as  eager  to  people  his  realm,  and 
so  become  in  time  the  god  of  war  and  pestilence  —  forces 
which  cause  death.  This  might  naturally  lead  also  to  his 
identification  with  the  glowing  heat  of  the  sun.  We  thus, 

1  KB.,  Vol.  IIP,  pp.  84,  85. 

2  IV  R.  26,  No.  1. 

8  Kosmologie,  pp.  476-487. 

4  Religion  of  Babylonia  and  Assyria,  p.  66  ff. 


TRANSFORMATIONS   IN  BABYLONIA  217 

I  believe,  have  a  genesis  for  Nergal  more  probable  than 
that  suggested  by  Jensen. 

So  far  as  appears  Nergal  was  a  Sumerian  god.  There 
is  no  trace,  in  the  scanty  information  concerning  him 
which  has  come  down  to  us,  of  the  peculiar  characteristics 
of  fertility  which  attach  to  all  the  chief  Semitic  deities. 
Delitzsch  long  ago  called  Kutha  one  of  the  oldest  centres 
of  Sumerian  civilization,1  and  that  still  seems  the  more 
probable  view.  This  old  Sumerian  agricultural  god  was 
adopted  by  the  Semites  and  assigned  a  place  in  their  pan- 
theon as  the  god  of  the  underworld.2  The  etymology  of 
his  name  is  uncertain.3 

Another  people  whose  home  lay  to  the  eastward  of 
Babylon  across  the  Tigris  were  the  Guti,  sometimes 
called  the  Suti.4  A  Semitic  king  of  this  country  has  left 
us  an  inscription  which  dates  from  3800  B.C.  or  earlier.6 
In  this  inscription  the  monarch  invokes  the  deities,  Guti, 
Ishtar,  and  Sin.  From  what  we  have  already  learned  of 
the  god  Sin  and  the  religious  syncretism  of  this  period, 
it  is  clear  that  this  deity  was  not  native  to  the  Guti.  Of 
the  other  two,  Ishtar  is  of  course  our  old  Semitic  goddess. 
From  a  list  of  Babylonian  deities  which  comes  to  us  from 
the  library  of  Assurbanipal,6  we  learn  that  the  worship  of 
Ishtar  was  maintained  here  in  much  of  its  primitive  purity 
down  to  a  much  later  time.  In  our  extant  inscriptions 
the  god  Guti  does  not,  so  far  as  I  have  observed,  appear 
again.  This  one  glimpse  of  him  makes  upon  one  the 

1  Parodies,  p.  217. 

2  By  the  transportation  of  Kutheans  to  Palestine  by  Sargon  (2  Kgs. 
1724'84),  the  worship  of  Nergal  was  introduced  among  the  western  Semites. 
It  seems  to  have  spread  from  Samaria  to  Sidon,  and  thence  was  carried 
by  Sidonian  emigrants  to  Athens.     See  CIS.,  Pt.  I,  Vol.  I,  No.  119. 

3  See  Jensen  and  Jastrow  as  cited  above. 
*  Cf.  Delitzsch,  Parodies,  pp.  233-237. 

6  Cf.  Winckler,  ZA.,  Vol.  IV,  p.  406  ;  Hilprecht,  OBL,  p.  12  ff. ;  Radau, 
Early  Babylonian  History,  p.  176  ff.,  and  Rogers,  History  of  Babylonia 
and  Assyria,  VoL  I,  p.  369  ff. 

«  III  R.  66,  reverse  col.  vi,  11. 18-26.  Cf.  translation  and  comments  in 
Hebraica,  Vol.  X,  p.  26  ff. 


218  SEMITIC  ORIGINS 


impression  that  he  was  probably  the  pre-Semitic  god  of 
the  country  Guti,  who  had  been  adopted  by  the  Semitic 
immigrants  in  accord  with  conceptions  with  which  we  are 
already  familiar,  and  associated  with  their  goddess. 

Another  of  the  petty  states  of  ancient  Babylonia  of  the 
god  of  which  we  get  a  glimpse  in  the  inscriptions  is  Gish- 
ban,  a  place  which  as  Thureau  Dangin  has  shown  lay  just 
north  of  the  Shatt-el-Khai.1  We  learn  from  the  inscription 
of  Lugalzaggisi  that  the  chief  god  of  this  place  was  repre- 
sented in  writing  by  the  two  signs  SI-ELTEG(?),  which 
mean  "the  one  who  pours  forth  grain,"2  but  which  a  much 
later  tablet  defines  as  Nidaba.3  The  emblem  of  Nidaba 
was  the  waving  grain ;  for  in  the  Gilgamish  epic,  the  un- 
kempt hair  of  the  wild  man,  Eabani,  is  said  to  have  grown 
as  luxuriously  as  Nidaba.4  We  know,  therefore,  that  this 
deity  was  an  agricultural  deity,  and  a  giver  of  fertility. 
Lugalzaggisi,  whom  Hilprecht  believes  to  be  a  Semite  be- 
cause of  Semitisms  in  his  inscription,5  calls  himself  a  son 
brought  up  by  this  deity.  There  is  no  direct  evidence  in 
the  inscription  as  to  whether  Nidaba  was  masculine  or 
feminine,  but  grain  deities  are  so  often  feminine,  that 
whether  Gishban  was  a  Semitic  settlement  or  not,  it  is 
probable  that  Nidaba  was  a  goddess  or  developed  out  of  a 
goddess.  The  culture  either  of  Arabia  or  of  Mesopotamia 
might,  so  far  as  we  can  tell,  have  produced  this  deity. 
We  must  leave  the  origin  of  this  goddess,  therefore,  to  be 
determined  when  further  inscriptions  have  arisen  from  the 
dust  to  throw  light  on  her  character. 

The  origin  of  the  gpcLAnu.  i^jihrojidjed^n^reatjob- 
scurity.  From  the  time  of  Gudea6  onward,  and  probably 

1  See  Comptes  rendus  de  Vacademie  des  inscriptions  et  belles-lettres, 
Vol.  XXIV,  (1896),  p.  693  ff.  and  Eevue  d1  assyriologie,  Vol.  IV,  p.  41. 
8  See  Briinnow's  List,  Nos.  7433  and  4447. 

•  Briinnow,  op.  cit.,  No.  7453. 

•  Haupt,  Nimrodepos,  p.  8,  1.  37  ;  cf.  Jensen  in  KB.,  Vol.  VI,  p.  121, 
who  renders  Nidaba  by  Weizen  "  Wheat." 

6  OBL,  Ft.  II,  p.  55. 

•  See  Statute  B  (De  Sarzec,  Decouvertes,  pis.  16-20),  col.  viii,  1.  45  ff., 
and  KB.,  Vol.  IIP,  p.  46,  47. 


TRANSFORMATIONS   IN  BABYLONIA  219 

from  the  time  of  Anu-banini,1  some  eight  hundred  years  I 
before  Gudea,  Anu  in  theory  stood  at  the  head  of  the  ] 
Babylonian  pantheon.  We  are,  however,  unable  to  con- 
nect his  name  with  any  city  the  political  importance  of 
which  would  help  to  give  him  this  commanding  position. 
We  learn  from  an  inscription  of  Nebuchadnezzar  1 2  (about 
1130  B.C.)  that  the  city  Der,  situated  on  the  Tigris,3  was 
a  city  of  Anu ;  but  this  city  plays  no  part,  so  far  as  we 
know,  in  early  Babylonian  history,  and  the  god  can  hardly 
have  been  placed  at  the  head  of  the  pantheon  in  conse- 
quence of  its  importance.  It  is  probable,  as  Jastrow  has 
suggested,4  that  he  was  given  this  position  as  the  result 
of  those  abstract  and  more  scholastic  conceptions  which 
resulted  in  the  formation  of  the  first  triad,  Anu,  Bel,  and 
Ea,  the  gods  of  heaven,  earth,  and  the  deep,  of  which 
the  god  of  heaven,  Anu,  naturally  took  the  first  place. 
Jastrow  supports  this  view  by  the  supposition  that  the 
heavens  were  not  really  personified  as  a  god  till  about 
the  time  of  Khammurabi.  He  reaches  this  conclusion  in 
part  because  of  the  fact  that  in  passages  which  are  often 
interpreted  as  referring  to  Anu  the  determinative  for  god 
is  not  prefixed  to  the  name  of  the  deity. 

This  latter  fact  does  not  necessarily  support  the  view 
in  question,  but  is  open  to  another  explanation.  The 
name  Anu  was  written  by  the  sign  an  with  a  phonetic 
complement.  An  had  also  as  a  determinative  the  value 
dingir  (z7w),  and  was  placed  before  the  names  of  gods. 
When  repeated  it  stood  for  the  plural  "  gods."  To  write 
it  twice  for  the  name  of  Anu  would  suggest  to  the  reader 
a  plural,  and  tend  to  create  confusion ;  it  may  have  been 
omitted  from  the  name  of  Anu  for  this  reason.  It  is  true 

1  See  Becueil  de  traveaux,  Vol.  XIV,  pp.  100-106,  and  Radau,  Early 
Babylonian  History,  p.  177  ff. 

2  See  Hilprecht's  Freibrief  Nebuchadnezzars  /,  1.  14,  and  Peiser  in 
KB,  Vol.  IIIi,  pp.  164,  165. 

8  Hilprecht,  OBI.,  No.  83,  1.  2,  Assyriaca,  pp.  10,  11,  and  Peiser,  KB., 
Vol.  IV,  pp.  64,  65. 

4  Beliyion  of  Babylonia  and  Assyria,  p.  89  ff. 


220  SEMITIC   ORIGINS 


that  in  a  number  of  passages  in  Lugalzaggisi,  Gudea,  etc.,1 
it  is  possible  to  translate  the  sign  as  an  adjective  as  Jas- 
trow  would,  but  in  the  inscription  of  the  king  of  Lulubi, 
who,  before  3800  B.C.,  erected  an  inscribed  stele  in  the 
mountains  near  the  modern  town  of  Zohab,2  such  is  not 
the  case.  Anu  and  Anat  were  then  already  deities  at  the 
head  of  Anu-banini's  pantheon.3  Not  only  so,  but  the 
king  bears  the  name  Anu-banini  ("Anu  is  our  begetter"), 
a  name  which  suggests  that  some  chthonic  god  of  fer- 
tility —  a  god  originally  connected  with  some  tribe  or  place 
—  had  been  identified  with  the  heavenly  expanse,  so  that 
an  earthly  history  really  lay  back  of  this  celestial  deity. 

The  name  of  the  Semitic  king,  together  with  the  fact 
that  Anu  and  Anat  stand  at  the  head  of  his  pantheon, 
suggests  the  view  that  this  pair  may  have  been  developed 
out  of  an  Ishtar  at  Lulubi,  as  Ea  and  Damkina  were  at 
Eridu.  This  hypothesis  cannot,  in  consequence  of  the 
scantiness  of  our  present  information,  be  either  proved  or 
disproved.  It  is  also  possible  that  Anu  may  have  been 
some  pre-Semitic  god  of  Lulubi,  whose  worship  the  Semites 
had  adopted  on  coming  to  the  country ;  but  if  so,  they 
had  probably  merged  the  cult  of  their  own  goddess  with 
him  till  she  became  Anat,  so  that  by  the  time  of  Lulubi 
the  history  of  Anu  and  Anat  was  parallel  to  that  of  Enlil 
and  Ninlil  at  Nippur.  It  is  at  all  events  probable  that 
Anu  resulted  from  the  identification  of  an  earthly  deity 
with  the  sky,  and  was  at  the  first  no  more  of  an  abstrac- 
tion than  Sin  and  Shamash  were. 

1  See  Hilprecht,  OBL,  No.  87,  col.  i,  1.  5  ;  De  Sarzec,  Decouvertes,  pi. 
13,  Nos.  1,  2,  col.  i,  1.  3  ;  col.  ii,  1.  15 ;  and  pi.  13,  No.  4,  col.  i,  1.  3.     See 
also  Thureau  Dangin  in  Rev.  semitique,  Vol.  V,  p.  269  ;  Amiaud  in  Bee. 
of  Pasf,  New  Series,  Vol.  II,  pp.  92,  93,  and  103  ;  also  Radau,  op.  cit.,  pp. 
152,  202,  204,  209,  257,  267,  280,  and  281.    The  determinative  is  not  infre- 
quently omitted,  however,  before  the  names  of  deities,  especially  in  the 
older  inscriptions. 

2  Rogers,  History  of  Babylonia  and  Assyria,  Vol.  I,  p.  360  ff . ,  and 
Radau,  op.  cit.,  p.  177  ff. 

8  It  is  impossible  in  this  inscription  to  translate  in  any  other  way  than 
as  the  name  of  a  god. 


TRANSFORMATIONS   IN  BABYLONIA  221 

It  seems  clear  from  the  preceding  discussion  that  the 
application  of  our  economic-religious  test  to  the  gods  of 
Babylonia  sheds  a  little  light  on  what  was  Semitic  in 
ancient  Babylonia,  and  what  may  with  plausibility  be 
claimed  as  non-Semitic.  The  test  cannot  at  present  be 
applied  throughout  in  consequence  of  the  fragmentary 
character  of  the  material,  nor  is  it  a  test  which  will  in  all 
cases  yield  perfectly  definite  results.  It  is  one,  notwith- 
standing, which  should  be  applied  conjointly  with  linguis- 
tic tests,  and  in  the  mixed  problem  of  Babylonian  origins 
it  proves  its  worth.  If  it  leads  us  at  times  to  determine 
the  boundaries  of  nationality  somewhat  differently  than 
we  should  from  linguistic  evidence  alone,  that  is  only  a 
tribute  to  its  value. 

About  the  middle  of  the  nineteenth  century  B.C.  the 
written  records  of  the  Assyrian  people  whose  home  lay  to 
the  north  of  Babylon  begin.  This  kingdom  was  primarily 
the  dominion  of  the  (^|£JxLAsliur.  The  Assyrian  empire, 
like  the  Roman,  resulted  from  the  dominion  of  a  single 
city.  This  city  was  the  city  of  the  god  Ashur,  who  thus 
became  the  national  god  of  the  Assyrians.1  The  Assyrian 
was  even  more  than  most  of  the  empires  of  antiquity  a 
well-organized  fighting  machine,  and,  as  all  the  statements 
about  Ashur  occur  in  inscriptions  written  after  the  era  of 
conquest  began,  they  necessarily  represent  Ashur  as  a  god 
of  war.2  As  a  local  deity  he  must  originally  have  pos- 
sessed  all  the  functions  of  a  local  god,  among  which  would 
be  in  an  agricultural  community  those  of  fertility.  Some 
recollection  of  this  has  survived  in  the  language  of  Assur- 
banipal,  who  calls  himself  the  offspring  of  Ashur  and 

1  The  name  of  the  city  Ashur  appears  originally  to  have  been  derived 
from  the  name  of  the  god.    This  is  not  so  strange  as  Jastrow  (pp.  cit.t 
p.  196)  thinks.    The  same  was  true  of  NinS  (see  above,  p.  155  ff.),  and 
probably  Nineveh  (see  below).     Eridu,  Ur,  and  Nippur  are  represented 
by  the  same  ideograms  as  Ea,  Sin,  and  Enlil,  showing  that  at  some  time 
the  names  of  these  gods  and  their  cities  were  the  same. 

2  For  a  statement  of  this  phase  of  Ashur,  see  Jastrow's  Religion  of 
Babylonia  and  Assyria,  p.  193  fL 


222  SEMITIC  OKIGINS 


Ishtar.1  With  him  the  expression  was  perhaps  somewhat 
figurative,  but  it  points  to  a  primitive  conception  of  these 
gods  similar  to  that  underlying  Talab  Riyam  and  Shams 
in  south  Arabia,  whose  worshippers  regarded  them  as 
their  parents.2 

Ashur  was,  so  far  as  appears,  a  purely  Semitic  town, 
and  although  there  existed  in  it  a  temple  of  Anu  and 
Ramman3  which  was  built  before  our  written  records  be- 
gin, the  worship  of  these  gods  must  have  been  a  later  im- 
portation than  the  worship  of  that  deity  for  whom  the 
city  was  named.  The  god  Ashur  cannot  be  connected 
with  either  of  these  since  he  is  never  connected  with  any 
of  the  elemental  powers  of  nature.  Nineveh  and  Arbela 
were  founded  by  Semites  who  brought  with  them  the 
worship  of  some  form  of  the  goddess  Ishtar,4  and  while 
Ashur  is  probably  older  than  either  of  them,  it  is  probable 
that  the  immigrants  who  founded  it  did  the  same.  Haupt 
suggested  some  years  ago  that  the  name  Ishtar  was  derived 
from  the  name  Ashur.5  This  view  we  have  found  it  im- 
possible to  accept,  but  it  is  possible  that  the  reverse  may 
be  true,  and  the  name  Ashur  be  derived  from  Ishtar.  In 
Assyrian  the  *Ayin  and  'Aleph  were  both  so  weakened  as 
to  be  at  times  indistinguishable,  so  that  it  only  remained 
to  assimilate  the  t  to  the  preceding  sh  to  transform  the 
name  of  the  goddess  into  that  of  the  god.6 

i  V  R.,  1,  1.    Cf.  KB.,  Vol.  IL,  pp.  152,  153. 

3  See  above,  p.  130. 

« I  R.,  15,  60  ff. ;  cf.  KB.,  Vol.  I,  pp.  42,  43. 

*  See  below,  Chapter  VI.  6  See  above,  p.  103,  n.  2. 

6  Such  assimilation  of  a  t  to  a  preceding  S  is  not  infrequent  in  the  com- 
mon speech  of  the  Babylonians  and  Assyrians  (cf.  Delitzsch,  Assyr. 
Gram.  §  51,  2).  The  £  was  in  such  cases  usually  changed  to  s,  but  in  the 
name  Ishtar  other  phonetic  laws  of  the  Babylonians  and  Assyrians  suffer 
variation,  e.g.,  S  before  a  dental  is  usually  changed  to  I,  but  in  the  name 
Ishtar  the  S  always  held  its  place.  The  $3  in  ASSur,  if  real,  may  be  a 
similar  exception.  It  is  not  certain  that  it  is  real,  however.  If  the  view 
of  Tiele  and  Muss-Arnolt  (p.  223,  n.  1),  represents  as  assumed  below  a  folk 
interpretation  of  a  later  time,  the  writing  of  the  name  may  have  been 
changed  from  Assur  to  ASSur  in  the  state  inscriptions  in  accordance  with 


TRANSFORMATIONS   IN   BABYLONIA  223 

Tiele  1  and  Muss-Arnolt  would  connect  the  name  with 
the  root  a-sh-r  which  occurs  both  in  Hebrew  and  Assyrian 
in  the  sense  of  "be  gracious,  bless,  cause  to  prosper." 
Although  this  view  is  supported  by  the  fact  that  the  name 
of  the  god  is  written  by  an  ideogram  which  means  good, 
it  is  probable  as  Jastrow  2  suggests  that  he  was  called  the 
"good"  as  a  mere  epithet.  It  is  most  probable  that  the 
epithet  was  applied  to  Ashur  by  a  folk  etymology,  which 
made  a  play  upon  the  name  as  is  so  often  done  with  Old 
Testament  names  and  as  was  done  at  Babylon  in  the  case  of 
Sarpanit.  If  so,  this  view  is  really  an  argument  in  favor 
of  another  origin  of  Ashur.  Possible  as  I  consider  these 
etymologies  to  be,  Hommel  has  suggested  one  3  which  must 
be  regarded  as  far  more  probable.  He  takes  the  name 
like  the  Assyrio-Babylonian  word  for  sanctuary  (ashirtu), 
to  be  derived  from  the  old  'asheras  or  posts  which  marked 
the  boundaries  of  Semitic  sanctuaries.  In  several  parts 
of  the  Semitic  world  the  name  of  the  post  was  transferred 
to  the  goddess,4  and  in  one  other  case  the  goddess  was  in 
all  probability  transformed  into  a  god.  Such  really  seems 
to  have  been  the  course  of  events  in  Assyria.  This  view 
is  supported  by  the  fact  that  Khammurabi  seems  to  have 
known  such  a  goddess,6  and  it  affords  a  simple  and  satis- 
factory etymology  for  Ashur. 

The  general  development  of  purely  Semitic  deities  from 
the  primitive  mother  goddess  as  a  starting-point  estab- 
lishes a  strong  probability  that  Ashur  was  a  transformed. 
Ishtar.  In  favor  of  this  view  is  the  fact  that  there  is  but 

this  interpretation.  That  the  speech  of  the  people  was  not  always  in  simi- 
lar cases  represented  in  the  writing  Delitzsch  admits  (Gram.  p.  119).  I 
regard  another  origin,  however,  as  far  more  probable.  For  another  folk 
interpretation  of  the  name  see  below,  p.  224,  n.  3. 

1  Babylonisch-Assyrische  Geschichte,  p.  633.     So  Muss-Arnolt  Hand- 
toorterbuch,  p.  118. 

2  Religion  of  Babylonia  and  Assyria,  p.  196  ff. 

*  Aufsdtze  und  Abbandlungen,  Vol.  II,  p.  209. 

*  See  below  Chapter  VI. 

6  Cf.  King's  Letters  and  Inscriptions  of  Hammurabi,  No.  66. 


224  SEMITIC  ORIGINS 


one  trace  of  an  Ishtar  of  the  city  of  Ashur,  and  that  is  a 
very  late  one,  capable  of  another  interpretation.  Assur- 
banipal  speaks  of  "  Ishtar  the  Assyrian," 1  but  in  reality 
he  probably  refers  to  the  goddess  of  Nineveh,  who  had  by 
his  time  long  been  associated  with  the  god  Ashur.  Nine- 
veh was  a  part  of  the  Assyrian  dominion  long  before  the 
earliest  of  our  extant  inscriptions,  and  it  is  probable  that 
the  worship  of  its  goddess  had  been  united  with  that  of 
Ashur,  so  that  Raman-nirari  I  and  Tiglath-pileser  I,  when 
they  refer  to  Ishtar,  mean  the  goddess  of  Nineveh.2 

Probably,  therefore,  the  original  goddess  of  the  city  of 
Ash"ur  was  transformed  into  a  god  before  the  dawn  of  the 
historical  period,  and  after  Nineveh  had  been  conquered 
its  goddess  became,  through  the  operation  of  those  laws 
of  syncretism  with  which  we  are  already  so  familiar,  the 
spouse  of  the  god  Ashur.3  The  deity  whose  worship  next 
to  that  of  Ishtar  was  most  widely  extended  over  the  Se- 
mitic world  was  the  god  known  in  Assyria  as  Ramman  and 
among  the  Aramaeans  as  Hadad  (in  cuneiform  Addu),  or 
Rimmon.  The  most  widely  recognized  function  of  this 
god  caused  him  to  be  regarded  as  the  god  of  thunder, 
lightning,  wind,  and  storm,  though  as  we  shall  see  other 
attributes  were  not  lacking  in  the  minds  of  some  of  his 
worshippers. 

1 V  R.,  1,  65  ff. ;  cf.  KB.,  Vol.  H,  pp.  158,  159,  and  Hebraica,  Vol.  IX, 
pp.  156,  157. 

2  This  point  was  not  clear  to  me  when  the  article  on  the  "  Ishtar  Cult " 
was  written.    The  classification  of  the  Assyrian  material  adopted  in  that 
article  (Hebraica,  Vol.  IX,  p.  131)  was  I  now  think  a  mistake.     Its  re- 
sults were  not  very  far-reaching,  as  it  only  led  to  the  assignment  of  four 
or  five  allusions  to  the  city  of  Assur  which  belonged  to  Nineveh. 

3  It  seems  probable  as  Jensen  and  others  have  suggested  (see  Jensen, 
Kosmologie,  p.  275,  and  ZA. ,  Vol.  I,  p.  1  ff. ;  Delitzsch,  Weltschopfung- 
sepos,  p.  94 ;  and  Jastrow,  op.  cit.,  p.  197),  that  the  god  Anshar  who  plays 
a  prominent  part  in  our  present  version  of  the  Babylonian  creation  epic  is 
intended  for  the  god  Ashur,  and  is  introduced  as  a  compliment  to  Assyria, 
An-shar  being  a  dissimilation  of  ASSur.    If  this  be  true,  however,  it  proba- 
bly does  not  help  us  with  the  real  etymology  of  the  name  Ashur,  but  is  a 
folk  etymology  similar  to  the  one  discussed  above,  p.  223  and  222,  n.  4. 


TRANSFORMATIONS  IN  BABYLONIA  225 

The  name  by  which  this  deity  was  known  in  the  older 
Babylonian  period  is  in  dispute.1  His  name  is  written  by 
the  ideogram  IM,  and  Thureau  Dangin  may  be  right  in 
holding  that  in  the  oldest  period  it  was  pronounced  "  Im- 
meru."2  However  this  may  be,  he  was  certainly  called  by 
the  Assyrians  Ramman.  Material  recently  made  accessi- 
ble to  scholars  makes  it  clear  that  the_ ^^rshi^jjf  JtluSugod 
is  of  great  antiquity  in  Babylonia.  We  do  not  know  in 
what  locality  his  worship  first  originated,  but  lie  was  in- 
voked by  Anu-banini  before  3800  B.C.,3  and  is  coupled  byf 
that  monarch  with  the  goddess  Ishtar.  The  same  god 
also  appears  as  a  deity  of  popular  worship  on  tablets  of 
the  time  of  Bur-Sin,  king  of  Ur.4  He  must  therefore 
have  ha^d  a  lonft  career  in  Babylonia  Ifflf ftfft  tih<*  tima  nf 
Khammurabi,  although  the  material  so  far  recovered  does 
not  enable  us  to  trace  it.  All  that  we  know  of  his  nature 
in  this  early  time  is  that  the  ideogram  IM,  "  wind,"  indi- 
cates that  he  was  connected  in  some  wavjadLth.  ika  weather. 

™i,LJ_L     i i     -  — — — •-•^•••^^^^^^^^^"•' 

By  Khammurabi  he  was  worshipped,  and  was  associated 
with  Shamash.5  Shamsu-iluna  built  a  fortress  or  town  to 
him.6  Later  in  the  Kassite  period  he  became  very  popu- 
lar, and  several  of  the  kings  bore  names  which  ascribed 
honor  to  him.  At  this  time  a  second  triad  of  gods  appears,  M 
composed  of  Sin,  Shamash,  and  Ramman.7 

1  That  he  was  called  by  several  names  appears  from  the  tablet  published 
by  Bezold,  PSBA.,  Vol.  XI,  pp.  173,  174,  and  pi.  1.    For  discussions  as  to 
the  name,  see  Hilprecht,  Assyriaca,  p.  76  ff.;  Oppert,  Comptes  rendus  de 
I'academie  des  inscriptions  et  belles-lettres,  June,  189,3;  Jour,  asiatique, 
1895,  pp.  393-396,  and  ZA.,  Vol.  IX,  pp.  310-314 ;  Thureau  Dangin,  Jour, 
asiatique,  1895,  pp.  385-393;  Jastrow,  AJSL.,  Vol.  XII,  pp.  159-162; 
and  Eeligion  of  Babylonia  and  Assyria,  p.  166  ff. 

2  He  was  also  called  Mer  in  Babylonia  and  Bir  in  Syria.     Cf .  Hilprecht, 
Assyriaca,  p.  77  ff. 

8  See  Recueil  de  traveaux,  Vol.  XIV,  pp.  100-106,  and  Radau,  Early 
Babylonian  History,  p.  177. 

«  Cf.  Radau,  op.  cit.,  pp.  327,  353,  1.  33  ;  427,  1.  6,  and  429. 

6  Cf.  KB.,  Vol.  IIP,  pp.  112,  113. 
•  KB.,  Vol.  IIP,  pp.  132,  133. 

7  See  any  list  of  the  kings  of  the  third  Babylonian  dynasty,  and  Belser 
in  BA.,  Vol.  II,  p.  201,  col.  vi,  1.  3. 


SEMITIC   ORIGINS 


In  Assyria  the  worship  of  Ramman  goes  back  to. pre- 
historic times,1  and  he  was  very  popular  in  the  historic 
period  as  the  god  of  storm,  lightning,  and  thunder,  who 
helped  to  overthrow  the  enemies  of  his  worshippers.2  Tig- 
lath-pileser  I  once  refers  to  him  as  the  god  of  the  "  west 
country,"3  which  shows  that  he  identified  him  with  the 
Aramaean  deity.  It  is  hardly  probable  that  Ramman 
was  born  on  Assyrian  soil.  It  is  more  probable  that  his 
worship  was  carried  thither  by  Babylonian  or  Aramaean 
immigrants,  preferably  the  former. 

In  the  El-Amarna  letters  from  Syria  and  Palestine  the 
ideogram  IM  is  used  to  represent  the  name  of  a  Syrian 
god,  which  is  at  times  spelled  syllabically  as  Ad-di,*  and 
once  as  Ha-da-dif  The  same  writing  occurs  centuries 
later  in  a  contract  written  in  Babylonia  for  an  Aramaean 
immigrant.6  These  passages  equate  the  Syrian  god  Hadad 
with  the  Babylonian- Assyrian  god  Ramman.  The  equa- 
tion was  a  most  natural  one  to  make,  as  the  names  Ramman 
and  Hadad  both  appear  to  have  meant  "Thunderer."7 

The  worship  of  this  god  in  Damascus  is  known  to  us 
through  the  Old  Testament,  where  his  name  usually  ap- 
pears as  Hadad,8  but  once  a  corruption  of  the  Assyrian 
form  occurs  as  Rirnmon.9  It  appears  from  the  obelisk 

1 1  R.,  15,  71  ff.    Cf.  KB.,  Vol.  I,  pp.  42,  43. 

8  Cf.  Tiglath-pileser  I  in  I  R.,  9,  9  ff.  and  78  ff.;  also  KB.,  Vol.  I,  pp. 
16-19.  Assurnasirpal  exhibits  the  popularity  of  Ramman  by  calling  him 
"The  mightiest  of  the  gods"  (KB.,  Vol.  I,  pp.  116-117). 

8  I  R,,  14,  87 ;  KB.,  Vol.  I,  pp.  38,  39. 

*  Cf.  KB.,  Vol.  V,  Nos.  333,  1041,  and  851.    The  name  is  written  by 
Assurbanipal  Da-ad-da  (VR.,  9,  2;  cf.  KB.,  Vol.  II,  pp.  222,  223). 

6  KB.,  Vol.V,  No.  881. 

•  See  TSBA.,  Vol.  VIII,  p.  282  ff.,  and  Sp.  41 ;    also  Strassmaier's 
Nabonidos,  No.  356. 

7  For  "  Ramman  "  cf.  Delitzsch,  HWB.,  p.  624,  and  Jastrow  in  AJSL., 
p.  160 ff.;  for  "Hadad "  cf.  Buhl  in  Gesenius's Handworterbuch,  13th ed., 
p.  191 ;  the  Brown-Robinson-Gesenius  Lexicon,  p.  212,  and  Hoffmann, 
ZA.,  Vol.  XI,  p.  227. 

8  See  1  Kgs.  1518-20,  20  P"'1™,  and  2  Kgs.,  624-etc-,  where  it  appears  as 
the  divine  element  in  the  name  of  the  king  of  Damascus. 

9  2   Kgs.   518.      Cf.  Baudissin's   discussion,    Studien  zur  semitischen 
Rrtir/ionsgeschichte,  Vol.  I,  308  ff. 


TRANSFORMATIONS  IN  BABYLONIA  227 

inscription  of  Shalmeneser  that  he  was  also  known  as 
"  Bir." 1  He  seems  to  have  been  the  chief  deity  of  Da- 
mascus, as  well  as  of  the  Aramaeans  generally.2  Two 
passages  in  the  El-Amarna  letters  prove  that  he  was  re- 
garded in  Assyria  as  the  majestic  thunderer  who  over- 
whelmed enemies.3  His  worship  would  seem  to  have  been 
carried  in  this  period  to  several  places  in  Palestine  by 
Aramaean  immigrants,  where  in  after  centuries  places 
bearing  the  name  of  "  Rimmon "  attest  the  fact  that  the 
worship  of  a  deity  bearing  that  name  had  once  held  sway.4 

The  excavations  at  Zendchirli,  in  the  extreme  north  of 
Syria,  have  brought  to  light  the  statue  of  the  god  Hadad, 
together  with  an  inscription  partly  in  his  praise  written 
by  a  king  of  the  eighth  century  B.C.  His  worship  would 
seem  to  have  extended  wherever  Aramaeans  went.  In 
their  migrations  they  carried  it  to  Babylonia,  as  already 
noted,  and  the  name  of  the  god  has  been  found  in  an  Ara- 
maic inscription  as  far  south  as  Telloh.6  In  Egypt  it  has 
been  found  in  the  vicinity  of  Memphis,6  while  the  worship 
penetrated  north  Arabia  at  Hegra,7  and  into  south  Ara- 
bia,8 where  the  god  was  known  as  Rimmon ;  while  as  the 
cult  of  Hadad  it  is  also  found  in  both  the  northern  and 
southern  parts  of  that  peninsula.9 

To  determine  the  origin  of  such  a  god  from  the  general 
point  of  view  of  our  preceding  discussion  would  seem  at 
first  glance  a  difficult  matter.  The  disciples  of  Max  Mul- 
ler,  who  take  every  deity  for  the  personification  of  some 

1  See  Abel  and  Winckler's  Keilschrifltexte,  p.  8,  1.  59,  and  p.  9, 1.  88 ; 
also  Hilprecht,  Assyriaca,  p.  77. 

2  See  the  name  of  the  king  of  Zobah  in  2  Sam.  S3-**0- 
«  KB.,  Vol.  V,  Nos.  1491*  and  1507. 

«  Josh.  1582,  jud.  20",  21",  and  Zech.  12U. 
«  CIS.,  Pt.  II,  Vol.  I,  No.  72. 
«  CIS.,  Pt.  II,  Vol.  I,  No.  124. 
'  CIS.,  Pt.  II.  Vol.  I,  No.  117. 

8  Cf.  Glaser's  Die  Abessinier  in  Arabien  und  Afrika,  p.  105. 

9  See  Hale"vy,  Melanges  de  critique,  p.  424 ;  Revue  semitique,  Vol.  II, 
p.  21 ;  Winckler,  Untersuchungen,  p.  69,  n.;  Noldeke,  ZDMG.,  Vol.  XLI, 
p.  712 ;  and  Wellhausen,  Reste  arab.  Heidentums,  2d  ed.,  p.  55. 


228  SEMITIC  ORIGINS 


natural  element,  might  be  thought  to  have  here  a  clear 
case  of  a  pure  and  simple  storm  god. 

There  are  not  lacking,  nevertheless,  conceptions  con- 
nected with  this  god  which  such  a  theory  is  powerless  to 
explain.  The  name  of  an  Old  Testament  city,  Ain-Rim- 
mon,  or  "  Fountain  of  Rimmon,"1  proves  that  the  god  was 
once  connected  with  a  spring,  while  the  request  which  Naa- 
man  made  of  Elisha  concerning  Yah  we2  suggests  that  he 
was  accustomed  to  connect  his  own  god,  Rimmon,  with 
the  soil.  Panamu  of  Zendchirli  also  calls  Hadad  "Baal 
of  water,"3  which  shows  that  he  regarded  him  as  a  Semitic 
Baal.  The  proper  name,  Ben-Hadad-nathan,  or  "  Hadad 
has  created  a  son,"4  of  which  the  Biblical  name  Ben-Hadad 
is  an  abbreviation,5  proves  him  to  have  been  connected 
with  animal  fertility  as  well  as  vegetable  productiveness. 
It  would  thus  seem  that  Hadad  had  been  an  earthly  Baal 
before  he  became  the  god  of  storms  and  thunder.  Jastrow 
has  pointed  out6  that  in  Assyria  Ramman  was  at  times 
identified  with  Shamash,  who  was  a  god  of  fertility,  so 
that  it  is  probable  that  a  similar  earthly  history  lay  back 
of  him  there.7  This  is  rendered  practically  certain  by 
an  old  Babylonian  hymn,  which  calls  Ramman  "lord  of 
wells."8 

1  Josh.  1582.    Cf.  recent  commentaries. 

2  2  Kgs.  5". 

8  Konigliche  Museen  zu  Berlin, — Mittheilungen  aus  dem  orientalischen 
Sammlungen,  Heft  XI,  Taf.  vii,  1.  1,  or  Lidzbarski's  Handbuch  der  nord- 
semitische  Epigraphik,  Taf.  xxii,  1.  1.  Cf.  Cook's  Glossary  of  Aramaic 
Inscriptions,  p.  32. 

4  See  references,  p.  226,  n.  6. 

6  This  fact  was  not  clear  to  me  in  1895  ;  cf.  JBL.,  Vol.  XV,  p.  175. 

6  Religion  of  Babylonia  and  Assyria,  p.  211. 

7  This  view  receives  some  corroboration  from  the  fact  that  in  one  of  the 
old  hymns  published  by  TJeisner  (Berlin,  Mittheilungen,  Heft  X,  p.  23, 
1.  10  ;  cf.  Banks's  Snm.-Bab.  Hymnen,  p.  25),  Ramman  is  described  as  a 
wild  ox.     The  bull  as  already  noted  is  a  symbol  of  the  gods  of  fertility  in 
agricultural  communities,  and  if  Ramman  had  once  been  such  a  god,  it 
would  be  very  natural  when  he  had  become  the  destructive  god  of  storms 
to  change  the  domestic  ox  which  symbolized  him  into  a  wild  ox. 

8  Translated  by  Sayce,  Hibbert  Lectures,  p.  530  ff. 


TRANSFORMATIONS  IN  BABYLONIA  229 

Indeed,  the  steps  by  which  a  god  of  the^soil  —  a  giver  of 
grain  —  became  a  storm  god^  are  very  clear.  As  the  god 
of  fertility  he  was  naturally  the  giver  of  rain,  and  as  the 
god  of  rain  he  would  become  the  god  of  thunder  and 
lightning.  When,  as  in  Babylonia  and  Assyria  political 
union  caused  the  formation  of  the  gods  into  a  pantheon, 
the  more  active  functions  of  production  were  thought  to 
be  presided  over  by  other  gods,  the  rain  god  would  in  time 
be  associated  with  the  more  violent  manifestations  of  his 
power,  and  become  the  god  of  storm  and  destruction. 

If  then  a  god  of  fertility  —  a  Baal — were  a  stage  in 
the  development  of  Ramman-Hadad,  it  is  highly  probable 
in  view  of  the  many  cases  of  transformation  which  have 
been  already  traced  that  this  Baal  was  in  turn  a  metamor- 
phosis of  the  primitive  goddess  of  fertility.  Thus  the 
evolution  of  the  storm  god  probably  followed  the  same 
course  as  that  taken  by  other  Semitic  deities. 

This  evolution  probably  went  on  independently  in 
Babylonia  and  among  the  Aramaeans.1  The  god  wor- 
shipped by  Anu-banini  3800  B.C.  can  hardly  have  been 
affected  by  Aramaic  influence,  and  we  have  no  reason  to 
suppose  that  Babylonian  influence  seriously  affected  the 
development  of  Hadad.  In  Assyria  two  waves  of  his 
worship  meet  and  unite,  —  one  from  Babylonia  and  one 
from  the  West. 

The  worship  of  the  god  Pagan  like  that  of  Ramman  is 
found  in  both  the  East  and  the  West,  —  in  Babylonia  and 
Assyria  on  the  one  hand  and  in  Palestine  on  the  other. 
It  is  found  about  2500  B.C.  in  the  name  of  a  prince  of 
Nippur,2  and  on  a  tablet  from  the  time  of  the  sovereignty 
of  Ur  which  is  perhaps  earlier  still.3  It  also  appears  in 
an  inscription  of  Khammurabi.4  In  Assyria  the  cult 

1  Of  course  in  Babylonia  some  Sumerian  influences  may  have  hastened 
the  process  of  evolution. 

*  I  R.,  2,  No.  6;  KB.,  Vol.  Ill,  pp.  86,  87. 

*  Radau,  Early  Babylonian  History,  p.  261. 
«Schrader,  KAT?,  p.  181. 


230  SEMITIC   ORIGINS 


seems  to  have  been  established  before  the  written  records 
of  that  country  begin,  for  we  find  it  as  an  element  in  a 
proper  name  at  the  very  dawn  of  history.1  Dagan_seems 
to_have  been  worshipped  in  Assyria  down  to  the  eighth 
century  B.Q  as  the  inscriptions  of  Assurnasirpal,  Shamshi- 
Ramman,  and  Sargon  show.2  According  to  the  Hebrew 
version  of  Tobit  it  continued  till  the  time  of  Sennacherib,8 
but  this  cannot  be  regarded  as  reliable  evidence. 

The  El-Amarna  letters  attest  the  presence  of  Dagan  in 
Palestine  in  the  fifteenth  century  B.C.,4  while  we  learn 
from  the  Old  Testament  that  he  was  the  god  of  Gaza5 
and  Ashdod,6  and  the  inscriptions  of  Sennacherib  make  it 
probable  that  he  was  the  god  of  the  Philistines  generally.7 
He  appears  also  to  have  been  once  worshipped  near  Nablus8 
and  in  the  neighborhood  of  Jericho.9 

Various  theories  of  the  origin  and  nature  of  Dagan 
have  been  propounded.  Rashi  advanced  the  idea  that  his 
name  was  derived  from  the  Hebrew  dag,  fish,  and  that 
Dagon  was  a  fish  god.10  In  recent  times  attempts  have 
been  made  to  strengthen  this  view  by  comparing  the 
Babylonian  pictures  of  the  fish  god  Ea,  but  the  compari- 

1  KB.,  Vol.  I,  pp.  42,  43 ;  ZA.,  Vol.  V,  p.  79,  and  Hebraica,  Vol.  IX, 
p.  132. 

a  See  references  in  Jensen's  Kosmologie,  p.  452. 

*  See  Neubauer's  edition,  p.  20. 

*  Cf.  the  name  Dagan-takala  in  KB.,  Vol.  V,  Nos.  215,  216. 
6  Jud.  1628. 

6  2  Sam.   S2*-;    1    Mace.,    1088-84,    II4,    and   Josephus,    Antiquities, 
xiii,  46. 

7  KB.,  Vol.  II,  pp.  92,  93 ;  cf.  Schrader,  KAT*,  p.  181 ;  and  Delitzsch, 
Parodies,  p.  289. 

8  See  Bait  Dejan  on  Pal.  Expl.  Funds,  map  seven  miles  east  of  Nablus, 
and  G.  A  Smith's  Historical  Geography,  p.  332,  n. 

9  Josephus,  Antiquities,  xiii,  81,  and  Jewish  Wars,  i,  23. 

10  See  Moore's  article  "Dagon"  in  Encyc.  Bib.,  and  Jules  Rouvier 
in  Jour,  asiat.,  September,  October,  1900,  p.  347  ff.  'QSdicwv,  who  was 
according  to  Eusebius  a  Babylonian  fish  god,  is  also  compared.  Cf. 
Schrader,  KA  T?,  p.  182  ;  and  Jensen,  Kosmologie,  p.  450.  Eusebius  is, 
however,  too  late  to  count  for  much  when  unsupported.  His  Odakon,  per- 
haps, is  for  a  corruption  of  Oannes. 


TRANSFORMATIONS   IN  BABYLONIA  231 

son  is  inapt,  since  the  Dagan  of  the  Babylonians  was 
quite  a  different  god  from  Ea. 

Philo  Biblos  took  the  name  from  the  Hebrew  ddgdn 
"grain"  and  regarded  Dagon  as  an  agricultural  deity.1 
This  view,  though  rejected  by  many  modern  scholars,  prob- 
ably comes  nearer  to  the  truth  than  the  former  one.  The 
real  nature  of  the  god  cannot  be  determined,  however, 
without  taking  into  account  the  evidence  from  both  the 
East  and  the  West. 

In  Babylonia  Dagan  was  associated  with  Bel,  the  god  of 
the  earth,  and  his  cult  would  seem  ultimately  to  have  been 
merged  into  that  of  Bel.2  Pagan  must  therefore  have 
been  a  god  of  the  earth  like  Bel,  or  in  other  words  he  was 
a  Baal 3  —  a  god  of  the  soil.  Jensen  holds  that  he  was  a 
Semitic  deity,*  and  believes  with  Jastrow  6  that  the  Baby- 
lonian god  is  closely  related  to  the  god  of  Philistia. 

The  course  of  evolution  by  which  the  great  Semitic 
deities  were  produced  leads  us  to  suspect  that  the  Semitic 
Baal  called  Dagon  was,  like  the  others  of  his  kind,  devel- 
oped out  of  a  still  earlier  mother  goddess  in  some  sheltered 
nook  at  a  time  when  intercommunication  had  not  pro- 
duced religious  syncretism.  It  is  a  difficult  matter  to 
determine  where  the  sheltered  nook  which  formed  the 
earliest  habitat  of  Dagon  was  situated.  His  worship  may 
have  originated  in  Babylonia,  whence  it  was  carried  to 
Assyria  in  prehistoric  days  and  to  Palestine  before  the 
El-Amarna  period.  It  can  hardly  have  been  the  native 
religion  of  the  Philistines  before  their  coming  to  Palestine, 
but  must  have  been  adopted  by  them  because  Dagon  was 
the  god  of  their  newly  acquired  home.6 

1  See  Sanchoniathontis  Fragmenta,  ed.  Orelli. 

*  III  R.,  68,  21  c,  d,  and  Jensen,  Kosmologie,  p.  453. 

8  So  Jensen,  op.  cit.,  p.  456.  *  Ibid.,  p.  455. 

6  Religion  of  Babylonia  and  Assyria,  p.  208. 

8  Whence  the  Philistines  came  we  do  not  know ;  perhaps  from  Asia 
Minor.  Cf.  the  article  of  W.  Max  Miiller,  "  Die  Urheimat  der  Philister," 
in  Mitteilungen  der  vorderasiatischen  Gesellschaft,  Vol.  V,  Heft  2,  pp. 
1-13. 


232  SEMITIC  ORIGINS 


Another  view  is  that  Dagon  was  an  Arameean  god 
whose  worship  radiated  from  the  highlands  between  Pales- 
tine and  Mesopotamia  to  the  countries  on  both  sides.1  In 
view  of  the  early  appearance  of  the  name  in  Babylonia 
this  theory  encounters  grave  difficulties.  We  cannot  at 
present  pronounce  definitely  upon  the  matter,  but  must 
patiently  wait  for  the  appearance  of  further  material.  It 
seems  probable,  however,  that  Dagon  was  a  Baal  developed 
at  some  point  on  Babylonian  soil  out  of  the  primitive 
Semitic  cult,  and  that  thence  his  worship  was  diffused  by 
emigration  to  Assyria  and  Palestine.2 

1  So  Jastrow,  op.  cit.,  p.  208,  and  Sayce,  Hibbert  Lectures,  p.  188. 
Sayce  infers  from  Sargon's  declaration  that  he  had  extended  his  protec- 
tion over  Harran  and  according  to  the  ordinance  of  Anu  and  Dagon 
written  down  their  laws,   that  Dagon  was  especially  connected  with 
Harran  —  a  conclusion  which  seems  no  more  necessary  for  Dagon  than  for 
Anu. 

2  The  god  Nusku  was  a  fire  god  (cf .  IV  E. ,  26,  No.  3,  Sayce,  Hibbert 
Lectures,  p.  497).     His  origin  is  obscure.    He  was  worshipped  in  the 
Assyrian  period  especially  by  Shalmeueser  II  and  Assurbanipal. 

Ninib  (Adar  ?)  was  the  same  as  or  a  development  from  Ningirsu,  (cf. 
II  R.,  64,  74,  and  Briinnow,  List,  No.  10994),  so  that  his  origin  has 
already  been  discussed. 

In  the  oasis  of  Palmyra,  some  150  miles  northeast  of  Damascus,  no 
special  male  deity  seems,  so  far  as  the  inscriptions  indicate,  to  have  been 
developed,  but  the  inscriptions  show  that  the  worship  of  Babylonian  and 
Syrian  gods  was  brought  here  by  immigrants  from  different  directions. 
The  Babylonian  Bel  (De  Vogue,  Syrie  centrale  [Palmyre]  Nos.  117, 
140),  Shamash  (No.  8),  and  the  Syrian  Baal  (Nos.  16,  73)  all  appear. 


CHAPTER  VI 

SURVIVALS 

HAVING  briefly  traced  in  the  two  preceding  chapters 
the  transformations  of  the  primitive  Semitic  goddess  in  the 
different  parts  of  the  Semitic  world,  something  should  now 
be  said  of  the  survivals  of  her  cult.  These  have  incident- 
ally been  already  introduced  in  part  at  various  points  of 
the  argument  as  they  were  needed,  but  have  not  all  of 
them  been  adequately  treated.  They  merit  a  brief,  con- 
nected discussion.  We  shall  begin  with  Arabia,  the  primi- 
tive Semitic  home. 

A  clear  case  of  survival  here,  though  under  a  different 
name  from  that  of  the  primitive  divine  mother,  is  the  god- 
dess Al-Lat,  whose  worship  can  be  traced  in  several  parts 
of  Arabia.  At  Taif,  to  the  south  of  Mecca,  it  flourished 
among  the  Thaqif,1  where  an  old  stone  nosb  or  masseba 
of  her  still  remains,  and  was  seen  by  Doughty.2  At  Sal- 
khad  her  cult  can  be  distinctly  traced  in  the  Nabathsean 
inscriptions.3  We  learn  that  a  temple  was  built  to  her 
there  at  one  time,  and  at  others  a  candlestick  and  a  nosb 
were  consecrated  to  her.  In  these  inscriptions  she  is  called 
the  "mother  of  the  gods."  The  other  gods  of  the  place 
were  Dhu-'l-Shara  and  Manutu.4  The  god  of  whom  she  was 
especially  the  mother  appears  from  a  passage  in  Epipha- 
nius,6  who  vouches  for  the  presence  of  her  worship  at  Petra 

1  Cf.  Ibn  Kutaiba,  p.  60,  and  Wellhausen,  Heidentum,  2d  ed.,  p.  30. 

2  Cf.  his  Arabia  Deserta,  Vol.  II,  pp.  611,  515,  and  517. 

«  See  CIS.,  Pt.  II,  Vol.  I,  Nos.  182,  183,  185,  and  De  Vogue's  Syria 
centrale,  Vol.  I,  pp.  107  and  119. 

*  CIS.,  Pt.  II,  Vol.  I,  No.  190,  etc.  «  Panarion,  LI. 

23.3 


234  SEMITIC   ORIGINS 


in  Edom,  and  tells  us  that  the  heathen  Arabs  at  that  place 
drew  a  parallel  between  her  and  her  son  Dhu-'l-Shara  on 
the  one  hand,  and  the  Virgin  Mary  and  the  child  Jesus 
on  the  other.1  It  appears,  then,  that  Dhu-'l-Shara  was 
her  son,  and  that  she  was  an  unmarried  goddess.  Robert- 
son Smith2  is  no  doubt  right  in  interpreting  this  to  mean 
that  she  was  originally  a  goddess  of  unwedded  love,  for 
an  unmarried  virgin  goddess  was  an  unheard-of  anomaly 
among  the  ancient  Semites. 

Perhaps  it  was  from  Petra  that  some  other  ancient 
writers  heard  of  this  goddess.  Thus  Herodotus  speaks  of 
her  3  under  the  name  Alilat,  and  calls  her  son  Dionysos. 
Ephraem  Syrus  speaks  of  her  and  her  companion  goddess 
Al-Uzza,  and  tells  how  women  sacrificed  chastity  in  their 
honor.4  Jerome  also  bears  testimony  to  the  same  fact, 
and  tells  us  further  that  the  goddess  was  identified  with 
the  morning  star.5 

At  Hegra  she  was  also  worshipped,  but  there  the  name 
of  Dhu-'l-Shara  was  placed  before  that  of  Al-lat.6  At  the 
date  from  which  the  inscriptions  from  Hegra  come  the 
influence  of  the  patriarchal  form  of  society  had  been  felt 
to  such  an  extent  that  Dhu-'l-Shara  had  become  superior 
to  his  mother ;  perhaps  he  had  become  her  husband. 

At  Palmyra,  in  the  second  century  A.D.,  the  worship  of 
Al-Lat  was  coupled  with  that  of  the  god  Shamash.7  It  is 

1  Wellhausen  (Heidentum,  2d  ed.,  pp.  48,  49)  seeks  to  break  the  force 
of  this  because  Epiphanius  says  the  goddess  was  called  Qaaba  (xaa/3oi;). 
Wellhausen  thinks  the  god  was  regarded  as  the  offspring  of  the  stone  which 
represented  him.    Robertson  Smith  is,  I  think,  right  {Religion  of  the 
Semites,  2d  ed.,  p.  56,  n.)  in  giving  the  interpretation  which  I  have  adopted 
in  the  text.     Semitic  gods  were  frequently  so  identified  with  the  object 
which  represented  them,  that  Epiphanius,  no  doubt,  has  put  the  name  of 
the  stone  fetich  which  represented  her  for  the  goddess  herself. 

2  See  preceding  note. 
«  Book  III,  8. 

4  Opera,  Vol.  II,  pp.  457  E  ;  458,  1.  1 ;  459  C. 

6  Cf.  Jerome's  Vita  Hilarionis,  c.  25. 
«  CIS.,  Pt.  II,  Vol.  I,  No.  198. 

7  De  Vogue,  Syria  centrale,  No.  8. 


SURVIVALS  235 


probable  that  the  worship  of  Shamash  had  at  this  north- 
eastern Nabathiean  outpost  been  introduced  from  Baby- 
lonia, and  that  it  had  been  united  with  the  Arabian  cult 
by  the  marriage  of  Shamash  and  Al-Lat. 

The  connection  of  the  Al-Lat  cult  with  the  primitive 
Semitic  goddess  is  obvious.  Al-Lat  is  but  an  epithet 1  and 
was  applied  to  the  goddess  at  various  points  until  it  super- 
seded her  real  name.  All  the  features  of  her  worship  of 
which  we  know  are  best  accounted  for  in  this  way.2 

Another  Arabian  goddess,  who  has  been  in  recent  years 
proven  to  be  a  survivor  of  the  primitive  Semitic  cult,  is 
Al-Uzza.3  She  was,  as  we  learn  from  the  quotation  which 
Yaqut,4  the  Arabian  geographer,  makes  from  Ibn-al-Kalbi, 
especially  worshipped  by  the  Koraish,  the  prophet's  tribe, 
whose  headquarters  were  at  Mecca.  They  honored  her, 
he  says,  with  sacrifices  and  pilgrimages.  In  another  pas- 
sage he  says  that  the  place  where  her  victims  were  slaugh- 
tered was  called  the  Ghabghab,5  a  name  which  seems  to 
have  been  applied  to  a  rivulet  or  trench,  into  which  the 
blood  of  the  victims  drained,6  and  which  emptied  into  the 
Zemzem.  The  latter  was  a  well  which  seems  to  have  been 
especially  connected  with  her  worship ;  into  it  images  of 
sacred  animals,  such  as  the  gazelle,  which  were  offered  in 
her  worship  or  in  that  of  Allah,  with  whom  she  was  con- 
nected, were  thrown.7  In  a  similar  way  she,  with  Allah, 
was  connected  with  the  Qa'aba,  into  which  her  golden 
gazelles  were  afterward  put.8  This  connection  with  Allah 
and  the  Qa'aba  is  established  by  the  Qur'an,  which  makes 
her  one  of  Allah's  daughters.9 

1  The  name  seems  to  have  been  originally  Al-Lahat,  "the  goddess," 
corresponding  to  Al-Lah  ;  cf.  Wellhausen,  Heidentum,  2d  ed.,  p.  33. 

2  Cf.  Hebraica,  Vol.  X,  pp.  68-66. 

8  See  W.  R.  Smith's  Kinship,  pp.  294,  295,  and  Hebraica,  Vol.  X, 
pp.  58-59. 

*  Cf.  ed.  Wiistenfeld,  Vol.  Ill,  p.  664.  6  Op.  cit.,  Vol.  Ill,  p.  773. 

•Cf.  Wellhausen,  Heidentum,  2d  ed.,  p.  103,  Smith,  Religion  of  the 
Semites,  2d  ed.,  pp.  198,  228,  and  340. 

7  Ibn  Hisham,  Vol.  I,  pp.  93,  94. 

8  Ibn  Hisham,  Vol.  I,  p.  94.  »  Sura,  5319. 


236  SEMITIC   ORIGINS 


The  connection  of  Al-Uzza  with  the  Zemzem  shows  that 
before  the  time  of  the  prophet  she  had  been  a  goddess  of 
wells  or  a  lidalat,  and  consequently  a  goddess  of  the  soil 
and  of  fertility  like  the  old  mother  Athtar.  The  fact  that 
the  dove  was  sacred  to  her,  together  with  the  nature  of 
her  festivals,  connects  her  worship  with  that  of  the  Ashtart 
of  Phoenicia  and  its  colonies,  to  whom  the  same  bird  was 
sacred.1 

The  most  decisive  indication  of  the  direct  descent  of  Al- 
Uzza  from  the  old  mother  goddess  is  the  character  of  the 
festivals  celebrated  in  her  honor.  Isaac  of  Antioch  testi- 
fies that  these  feasts  were  licentious,2  that  boys  and  maidens 
were  sacrificed  in  them,3  and  that  the  goddess  was  identi- 
fied with  the  planet  Venus.  This  festival  still  survives  at 
Mecca.  It  is  celebrated  in  the  sixth  month  and  is  still  of 
a  licentious  character.4  It  is  the  lineal  descendant  of  one 
of  the  festivals  of  the  primitive  goddess  described  above 
in  Chapter  III.5 

At  Nakhla,  a  valley  southwestward  from  Mecca,  which 
takes  its  name  from  its  abundant  palm  trees,  Al-Uzza.  was 
identified  with  a  samura  tree  or  group  of  samura  trees,6 
which,  as  noted  above,  are  declared  in  a  scholion  to  Ibn 
Hisham  to  be  palm  trees.7  The  doubts  of  Wellhausen 
and  Robertson  Smith  as  to  the  correctness  of  this  state- 
ment have  already  been  discussed.  The  general  course  of 
the  development  of  Semitic  civilization  and  the  agencies 
which  acted  as  factors  of  progress  tend,  as  we  have  traced 
them,  to  establish  the  veracity  of  this  scholion.  Some 
Arabic  writers  declare  that  there  was  a  temple  of  Al-Uzza 
at  Nakhla,  but  Wellhausen8  is  probably  right  in  holding 
that  the  temple  was  at  another  place  called  Bass,  and  that 
the  later  Arabs  confused  this  temple  with  Nakhla,  where 

1  Smith,  Kinship,  p.  294. 

2  Ed.  of  Bickell,  p.  244.    Cf.  Wellhausen,  op.  cit.,  p.  39  ff. 

*  Ed.  of  Bickell,  p.  220. 

*  See  Snouck  Hurgronje's  Mckka,  Vol.  II,  pp.  59-61.     6  p.  94  ff. 

6  Wellhausen,  Heidentum,  2d  ed.,  p.  38. 

7  p.  145.     Cf.  above,  p.  77  ff.  8  Op.  cit.,  p.  38. 


SURVIVALS  237 


the  goddess  was  supposed  to  dwell  in  the  trees  already 
mentioned. 

It  was  probably  a  sacrifice  in  worship  of  Al-Uzza  which 
Theodulus,  son  of  Nilus,  witnessed  "  to  the  morning  star  " 
among  the  Arabs  of  the  Sinaitic  peninsula.  None  of  this 
sacrifice  could  remain  till  the  morning.1  The  ritual  of 
this  offering  resembles  that  which  Bent  found  in  Abys- 
sinia, which  has  already  been  traced  to  the  primitive 
Semitic  cult.2 

Wellhausen  and  Robertson  Smith3  have  perceived  that 
Al-Lat  and  Al-Uzza  are  in  reality  one,  and  that  their 
names  are  but  epithets  for  the  same  goddess.  As  Al-Lat 
is  the  feminine  of  Al-Lahu,  so  Al-Uzza,  "  the  mighty,"  is 
an  epithet  applied  in  its  masculine  form  to  Allah  also,  and 
in  south  Arabia  was  applied  to  other  deities.4  There  can 
be  no  doubt  that  both  are  survivals  in  slightly  different 
forms  of  the  primitive  mother  goddess  of  the  Semites,  who 
was  in  part  transformed  at  Mecca  into,  and  became  the 
basis  of,  the  Mohammedan  Allah. 

With  the  movement  of  the  Semites  northward  from 
Arabia  the  worship  of  their  mother  goddess  was,  as  we 
have  seen,  carried.  In  many  places  she  was  in  prehistoric 
times  transformed  into  a  god  ;  but  in  others  she  survived 
in  her  original  character  far  down  into  historic  times. 

One  of  the  places  where  such  survival  occurred  was  a 
city  which  occupied  an  important  site  on  the  plateau  east 
of  the  Jordan,  and  which  took  its  name  from  the  goddess. 
It  appears  in  the  earliest  extant  documents  which  refer  to 
that  section  of  the  country,  the  inscriptions  of  Thothmes 
III5  and  the  El-Amarna6  letters.  It  is  called  in  these 

1See  Migne,  Patrologia  Grceca,  Vol.  LXXIX  (ffili  Opera"),  p.  611  ff. 
Cf.  Wellhausen,  op.  cit.,  p.  42  ff.,  and  Smith,  Religion  of  the  Semites, 
2d  ed.,  pp.  166,  227,  281,  338,  361,  363,  364. 

2  Above,  p.  112.  8  Heidentum,  2d  ed.,  p.  44  ;  Kinship,  p.  295. 

*  See  the  name  II-' Azza,  "  God  is  mighty,"  which  occurs  as  a  Sabaaan 
proper  name  in  CIS.,  Pt.  IV,  Vol.  I,  No.  118. 

6  Cf.  W.  Max  Mullet's  Asien  und  Europa,  p.  162. 

•  Cf.  KB.,  Vol.  V,  Nos.  142W  ^d  23721. 


238  SEMITIC  ORIGINS 


documents  Ashtart,  and  in  the  Old  Testament  Ashtaroth * 
and  Ashtoreth  Karnaim.2  It  was  therefore  a  prehistoric 
sanctuary  of  the  goddess.  It  continued  to  be  an  important 
centre  of  her  worship  down  to  the  Maccabeean  period.3 

What  the  name  Karnaim  ("  two-horned ")  signified  has 
been  a  matter  about  which  opinions  have  differed,  some 
taking  it  to  mean  that  she  was  a  moon  goddess,4  others 
that  she  was  worshipped  in  the  form  of  a  cow.6  The  real 
meaning  is  probably  that  suggested  by  Moore,6  which 
makes  Karnaim  "  the  two-peaked  mountain,"  and  supposes 
that  the  city  was  situated  in  a  valley  between  two  hills. 
In  later  times  the  name  was  shortened  to  Karnaim,7  and 
under  this  name  maintained  its  existence  down  to  the 
second  century8  and  perhaps  later.  By  the  time  of  Euse- 
bius  its  importance  had  apparently  waned.9  Although  we 
have  no  details  concerning  the  worship  of  the  goddess  in 
this  city  further  than  that  she  had  a  temple  there,  there 
is  no  reason  to  suppose  that  it  differed  in  any  material 
feature  from  the  forms  which  it  assumed  elsewhere. 
The  writer  of  2  Maccabees  has  confused  the  Ashtart  of 
Karnaim  with  the  goddess  Atargatis,  a  divinity  whose 

i  Josh.  13.21  2  Gen.  14". 

8  The  Onomastica  of  Eusebius  and  Jerome  give  two  places  east  of 
the  Jordan  named  Astarte.  Buhl,  in  his  Geographic,  p.  248  ff.,  follows 
this,  but  it  is  doubtful  whether  it  is  true.  The  names  floated  about  some- 
what in  the  later  times  (cf.  G.  A.  Smith's  "Ashtaroth"  in  Encyc.  Sib., 
and  my  "Ashtaroth"  and  "Ashtoreth  Karnaim"  in  Jewish  Encyclo- 
pedia'). Tell  Ashtarah,  Tell  Ash'ari,  and  Muzeirib  are  sites  which  have 
been  identified  with  the  name.  Excavation  of  the  sites  will  be  necessary 
before  their  identity  can  be  determined. 

*  See  Stade  in  ZAW.,  Vol.  VI,  p.  323  ff. 

5  That  was  my  view  in  1894.     Cf.  Hebraica,  Vol.  X,  p.  40. 

6  JBL.,  Vol.  XVI,  p.  156  ff.     Moore  bases  his  suggestion  on  a  parallel 
name  of  Baal  contained  in  some  Latin  inscriptions  from  North  Africa. 

7  So  Amos  618,  1  Mac.  648,  and  2  Mac.  1226.     Cf.  Wellhausen,  Skizzen 
und  Vorarbeit en ;    Heft  V,  p.  86;    G.  A.  Smith,  Book  of  the   Twelve 
Prophets,  Vol.  I,  p.  176,  and  Nowack,  Kleinen  Propheten,  p.  147. 

8  1  Mac.  6*8,  and  2  Mac.  122*. 

9  This  is  inferred  in  consequence  of  the  probable  confusion  of  names 
by  Eusebius. 


SURVIVALS  239 


origin  and  nature  are  much  debated.  Baethgen  has 
pointed  out1  that  the  name  Athtar  or  Ashtar  would  in 
Aramaic  become  Atar.  Such  a  goddess  was  found  by 
Assurbanipal  among  the  Aramaeans,  who  were  associated 
with  the  Nabathseans  encountered  in  his  Arabian  cam- 
paign.2 Her  worshippers  called  her  Atar-samain,  i.e. 
"Atar  of  the  heavens."  This  proves  the  presence  among 
the  Aramaeans  of  the  old  Semitic  mother  goddess.  A  god- 
dess who  is  in  part  at  least  the  same  appears  in  a  bilingual 
inscription  (Aramaic  and  Greek)  from  Palmyra  under  the 
name  'Atar  'atah,  in  Greek  Atargatis.3  Atargatis  is  also 
the  name  of  a  goddess  who  is  mentioned  by  Greek  and 
Roman  writers.4 

Since  the  second  element  of  the  name  of  the  goddess  in 
the  Aramaic  portion  of  the  Palmy rene  inscription  appears 
as  a  component  element  of  theophorous  proper  names,6 
Baethgen  concludes  that  it,  too,  was  originally  the  name  of 
a  deity.  Since  Lucian  and  Macrobius  describe  the  temple 
and  rites  of  Atargatis  at  Hierapolis-Bambyce  (Mabug)  in 
Syria,  where  she  was  worshipped  as  the  consort  of  the 
god  Hadad,6  and  since  Melito  of  Sardis  and  some  Greek 
inscriptions  from  Batanea  couple  a  goddess  'Ati  with 
Hadad,  Baethgen  also  concludes  that  Atargatis  is  a  name 
compounded  of  the  Aramaean  goddess  Atar  and  that  of 
the  goddess  'Ati,  and  formed  like  the  name  Ashtar- 

1  Beitrdge  zur  semitischen  Religionsgeschichte,  p.  69  ff.  The  s  or  t 
•would  in  Aramaic  become  t,  and  the  two  fs  would  be  assimilated  or 
written  with  a  dagesh  understood. 

3  Cf.  Ill  R.,  24,  11.  98  and  106,  and  George  Smith's  Assurbanipal,  pp. 
270,  271,  283,  and  295. 

8  De  Vogue,  Syrie  centrale,  No.  3.  The  name  is  spelled  injnnj?  on  a 
coin.  Cf.  ZDMG.,  Vol.  VI,  p.  472  ff. 

*Cf.  Lucian,  De  Syria  Dea,  §§  14,  15;  Strabo,  Book  XVI,  1,  27, 
and  Macrobius,  Saturnalia,  I,  22,  18. 

*In  addition  to  the  names  cited  by  Baethgen,  op.  cit.,  cf.  Cook,  Glos- 
sary of  Aramaic  Inscriptions,  p.  95 ;  Lidzbarski,  Nordsemitische  Epigra- 
phik,  Vol.  I,  p.  347,  and  Gottheil  in  JAO8.,Vol.  XXI,  Pt.  II,  pp.  109-111. 

eln  addition  to  the  references  in  n.  4,  cf.  Lucian,  op.  cit.,  §§  31,  32, 
and  Pliny,  Nat.  Hist.,  V,  23. 


240  SEMITIC   ORIGINS 


Chemosh.  The  Phrygians  had  a  goddess  Attis,1  and 
since  the  name  Atargatis  occurs  only  in  late  sources,  it  is 
possible  that  a  fusion  of  two  goddesses,  one  Semitic  and 
one  foreign,  had  taken  place.  Jensen,2  on  a  far  more 
slender  thread  of  evidence,  explains  the  name  as  a  corrup- 
tion of  that  of  the  Hittite  god  or  goddess  Tarkhu,  with 
an  'Ayin  prefixed  and  a  feminine  ending  added  to  make  it 
analogous  to  Ashtart.  Such  an  explanation  seems  far  less 
probable  than  Baethgen's. 

Still  another  possibility  should  be  considered.  'Ati  or 
'Athi,  the  second  element  in  the  name  of  the  Palmyrene 
goddess,  may  originally  have  been  an  epithet  descriptive 
of  her  as  the  defender  of  her  people,  and  finally  by  a 
fashion  similar  to  that  which  attached  the  name  Sebaoth 
to  the  name  Yahwe  among  certain  Israelitish  writers  it 
may  have  become  a  part  of  the  name  of  the  goddess.  If 
it  were  an  epithet,  it  would  naturally  come  in  time  to  be 
used  for  the  goddess  herself,  and  thus  would  enter  as  an 
element  into  proper  names  as  Abu,  Akhu,  and  Melek  have 
entered.  This  explanation  cannot  be  regarded  as  very 
satisfactory,  as  no  good  Semitic  etymology  of  'Ati  is 
forthcoming. 

On  the  whole  the  explanation  of  Baethgen  seems  most 
probable.  The  late  date  of  the  sources  in  which  the  name 
is  found,  the  well-recognized  syncretism  which  took  place 
in  Syria  after  the  days  of  Alexander  the  Great,  as  well 
as  the  tendency  of  the  Semites  of  the  Greek  and  Persian 
periods  to  form  divine  names  by  compounding  the  names 
of  two  separate  gods,3  all  point  in  this  direction.  If  such 
combination  took  place,  it  was  after  the  time  of  Assurbani- 
pal's  campaign  (cir.  640  B.C.),  — and  probably  long  after, 

1  Cf.  Macrobius,  Saturnalia,  I,  21,  7,  and  22,  4  ff.,  and  Lucian,  op.  cit., 
§  15.     Attis  and  Atargatis  are  both  said  by  these  writers  to  ride  upon 
lions  —  another  point  in  favor  of  the  theory  of  fusion. 

2  Hittiter  und  Armenier,  p.  157. 

•See  the  article  on  "West  Semitic  Deities  with  Compound  Names  " 
in  JBL.,  Vol.  XX,  p.  22  ff. 


SURVIVALS  241 


—  for  the  Semitic  goddess  in  her  Aramaic  form  at  that 
time  was  worshipped  under  her  own  name. 

Atar,  even  when  compounded  with  the  Phrygian  god- 
dess, did  not  differ  materially  from  Ashtart  in  character 
and  functions,  as  Lucian  and  Macrobius  testify.  We  are 
therefore  justified  in  regarding  her  as  practically  the  same 
as  the  Aramaean  goddess  Atar.  Atar  was  as  like  to  Ash- 
tart  as  was  Ashtart  to  Ishtar.  All  had  sprung  from  the 
same  root,  but  had  developed  in  different  branches  of  the 
great  Semitic  family.  It  is  not  strange  therefore  that 
the  author  of  2  Maccabees  should  identify  the  two  and  call 
the  temple  of  Ashtart  the  temple  of  Atargatis.  Consider- 
ing the  tendency  to  fusion  in  the  later  time,  this  seems 
more  probable  than  the  supposition  that  there  was  in 
Karnaim  a  temple  of  both  goddesses.1  The  writer  prob- 
ably called  the  goddess  by  the  name  most  familiar  to  him. 

The  Aramaic  goddess  Atar  (Atargatis)  was,  like  her 
sister  goddesses  in  other  countries,  worshipped  sometimes 
alone  as  among  the  Isammikhi 2  and  at  Palmyra,  and  some- 
times as  the  consort  of  the  closely  related  deity  Hadad. 
At  Palmyra,  where  the  population  was  composed  in  part 
of  Nabathsean  Arabs  and  of  Aramaeans,  both  Al-Lat  and 
Atargatis  found  worshippers.  At  Hierapolis-Bambyce 
she  was  worshipped  in  the  temple  of  Hadad  as  his  consort. 
Fishes  and  doves  were  sacred  to  her.  Statues  in  the 
temple  represented  both  her  and  Hadad,  that  of  the  god 
being  supported  by  bulls,  and  that  of  the  goddess  by  lions.3 

Another  city  in  which  the  worship  of  this  goddess  sur- 
vived and  where  its  history  seems  to  have  run  a  similar 
course  was  Ashkelon.  This  town,  situated  on  or  near  the 
Mediterranean  coast,  was  a  fortress  of  some  importance 
under  the  eighteenth  Egyptian  dynasty ; 4  it  joined  in  the 

1  So  Cheyne,  Encyc.  Sib.,  Vol.  I,  col.  379. 

2  III  R.,  24,  11.  98,  106,  and  George  Smith's  Assurbanipal,  pp.  270, 
271,  283,  and  295. 

8  See  Lucian,  De  Syria  Dea,  §§  14,  15,  31,  32,  and  Macrobius,  Satur- 
nalia, I,  22,  17-22. 

*Ci.KB.,  Vol.  V,  No.  211  ff. 


242  SEMITIC  ORIGINS 


conspiracy  against  Jerusalem  which  Abdi-kheba's  letters 
reflect;1  and  seems  to  have  revolted  from  Rameses  IIa. 
In  the  early  days  of  Israelitish  history  it  was  one  of  the 
five  Philistine  cities  of  importance. 

The  earliest  mention  which  we  have  of  the  temple  of 
the  goddess  at  this  place  is  probably  the  statement  in 
1  Sam.  319,  that  the  Philistines  after  the  battle  of  Gilboa 
hung  the  armor  of  Saul  in  the  "house  of  the  Ashtaroth." 
As  we  have  positive  evidence  afterward  of  the  worship  of 
the  goddess  only  at  Ashkelon,  the  reference  is  probably  to 
the  temple  of  that  place.3  If  this  be  true,  the  goddess  of 
Ashkelon  was  to  the  Israelites  indistinguishable  from  the 
Canaanitish  goddesses. 

We  catch  a  glimpse  of  her  cult  again  in  Herodotus,4 
who  calls  her  the  Oriental  Aphrodite,  and  who  by  refer- 
ence to  the  disease  which  the  Scythians  took  from  thence 
bears  witness  to  the  survival  of  those  rites  which  we  have 
found  to  be  so  characteristic  of  the  primitive  Semitic 
mother  goddess. 

Later  writers6  call  the  name  of  the  goddess  Atargatis, 
identifying  her  with  the  Aramaic-Syrian  deity  which  we 
have  already  traced.  It  is  impossible  from  our  present 
information  to  determine  absolutely  whether  it  was  the 
Aramaeans  or  the  Canaanites  who  first  planted  the  worship 
of  the  goddess  at  Ashkelon.  It  seems  reasonable  to  con- 
jecture, however,  that  it  was  of  Canaanitish  origin,  and  that 
the  Aramaic  element  was  afterward  introduced  into  it. 

It  was  probably  at  Ashkelon  that  the  custom  of  repre- 
senting the  goddess  as  half  woman  and  half  fish  originated, 
for  at  Ashkelon  her  temple  stood  near  a  lake  filled  with 

1KB.,  Vol.  V,  No.  180"  ff. 

8  W.  Max  Mtiller's  Asien  und  Europa,  p.  222. 

8  Of  course  it  is  possible  that  there  may  have  been  smaller  temples  of 
the  goddess  elsewhere,  but  on  the  whole  the  position  taken  in  the  text 
seems  probable. 

*  Book  I,  105. 

6  See  Diodorus  Siculus,  Book  II,  ch.  iv,  and  Ovid,  Metamorphoses, 
Book  IV,  11.  44-46. 


SURVIVALS  243 


fish,1  and  was  also  not  far  from  the  sea-coast.  Fishing 
must  have  become  one  of  the  means  of  living  at  a  very 
early  time,  and  by  the  same  processes  of  thought  which 
led  to  the  representation  of  Ea  at  Eridu  as  half  man, 
half  fish,  the  goddess  of  the  fishermen  of  Ashkelon  took  on 
a  similar  form.  At  Hierapolis-Bambyce,  situated  between 
the  ranges  of  Lebanon,  she  was  represented  under  a  similar 
form,  but  the  custom  may  have  been  transferred  thither 
from  Ashkelon.  It  has  been  inferred  2  from  this  form  that 
the  goddess  was  the  personification  of  the  fructifying 
power  of  water.  It  seems  clear  from  the  wide  survey  of 
the  cult  which  has  been  made  in  the  preceding  pages  that 
such  connection  of  the  goddess  with  water  far  antedates 
the  time  when  her  worship  was  planted  at  Ashkelon. 
The  fish  form,  though,  may  well  have  been  born  in  that 
peculiar  environment. 

By  Greek  writers  Atargatis  was  more  often  called 
Dekerto.  The  myth,  that  becoming  enamoured  of  one 
of  her  worshippers,  she  became  by  him  the  mother  of 
Semiramis,  the  queen  of  Babylon,3  is  additional  proof  of 
her  practical  identity  with  the  old  polyandrous  goddess 
which  was  worshipped  among  the  Nabathaeans  as  Al-lat 
and  sometimes  held  in  later  centuries  to  be  a  virgin. 

At  Sidon  the  chief  deity  was,  as  already  noted,  Ashtart, 
but  in  this  city  her  worship  underwent  a  twofold  develop- 
ment. On  the  one  hand,  the  old  mother  goddess  was  re- 
tained in  her  primitive  independence,  so  that  when  her 
cult  was  opposed  by  Israelitish  prophets  she  was  called 
"the  abomination  of  the  Sidonians."*  To  her,  king  Tab- 
nith  tells  us,  both  himself  and  his  father  were  priests,6 
and  Eshmunazer  II  says  that  his  mother  was  her  priestess.6 

1  Diodorus  Siculus,  ibid. 

2  Legarde,  Mittheilungen,  Vol.  I,  p.  77,  and  White's  article,  "  Atarga- 
tis" in  Hastings's  Dictionary  of  the  Bible. 

*  Diodorus  Siculus,  Book  II,  ch.  iv. 
«  2  KRS.  23". 

'  Cf.  Revue  archeologique,  1887,  p.  2. 

•  CIS.,  Vol.  I,  Pt.  I,  No.  3"-«. 


244  SEMITIC   ORIGINS 


Side  by  side  with  this  primitive  cult  there  was  one 
somewhat  modified.  "Ashtart  of  the  name  of  Baal,"  an 
Ashtart  probably  which  had  in  part  been  metamorphosed 
into  a  god,  was  also  worshipped.  To  each  of  these  god- 
desses Eshmunazer  built  a  temple,1  perhaps  the  same 
which  Lucian  afterward  saw  there.2 

Sidon  was  one  of  the  headquarters  of  the  Phoenician 
shipping  trade,  and  its  goddess  became  in  consequence 
the  patroness  of  mariners.  She  is  often  pictured  on 
Sidonian  coins  as  standing  on  the  prow  of  a  galley  with 
one  hand  outstretched,  holding  a  crown  and  pointing  the 
ship  on  its  way,3  a  device  also  adopted  on  the  coins  of 
other  Phoenician  cities.  According  to  Lucian,  Ashtart 
of  Sidon  was  also  identified  with  the  moon.4 

It  is  stated  by  Eusebius  on  the  authority  of  a  Phoenician 
writer  that  at  Tyre,  Ashtart  was  the  chief  deity  with 
whom  two  others  (probably  Melqart  and  Eshmun)  6  were 
associated,  and  that  the  goddess  here  had  the  head  of  a 
bull.  Josephus  also  states  that  Hiram,  king  of  Tyre, 
built,  at  Tyre,  in  addition  to  the  temple  of  Baal,  a  temple 
of  Ashtart,  in  which  Eth-Baal,  the  father  of  Jezebel,  was 
priest.  Josephus  no  doubt  gives  the  correct  view  in  say- 
ing that  Melqart  (Heracles)  was  at  the  head  of  the 
pantheon  of  Tyre,  and  that  the  worship  of  Ashtart  was 
in  historical  times  subordinate  to  his. 

At  Byblos,  the  ancient  Gebal  (the  Gubla  of  the  El- 
Amarna  letters),6  the  cult  of  Ashtart  survived  in  much 
of  its  original  form.  Yahumelek,7  a  king  of  Gebal  in  the 

1  CIS.,  Ft.  I,  Vol.  I,  No.  3. 

2  De  Syria  Dea,  §  4. 

8  Cf .  Driver  in  Hastings's  Dictionary  of  the  Bible,  Vol.  I,  p.  167. 

4  Op.  eft.,  §  4. 

6Cf.  my  article  "The  Pantheon  of  Tyre,"  in  JAOS.,  Vol.  XXII, 
p.  115  ff.,  and  Herod.,  II,  49,  who  vouches  for  the  Tyrian  origin  of  Aphro- 
dite at  Thebes,  with  whom  Adonis  was  connected.  Cf.  Paus.,  IX,  16,  3, 
and  below,  Chapter  VIII. 

«  See  KB.,  Vol.  V,  Nos.  50,  53,  123,  and  137. 

7  CIS.,  Pt.  I,  Vol.  I,  No.  1. 


SURVIVALS  246 


fifth  century  B.C.,  venerates  the  goddess  as  the  Baalat  of 
Gebal,  and  makes  it  clear  that  she  not  only  stood  at  the 
head  of  the  pantheon,  but  that  all  other  worship  there  was 
practically  subordinate  to  hers.  Her  temple  at  Byblos  is 
pictured  on  an  old  coin,1  and  is  also  mentioned  by  Lucian. 
It  was  here  that  Lucian  found  the  rites  of  Tammuz  surviv- 
ing in  connection  with  the  worship  of  the  mother  goddess. 
He  describes  it  as  follows :  — 

"  But  I  also  saw  in  Byblos  a  great  temple  of  Aphrodite 
of  Byblos,  in  which  also  the  rites  to  Adonis  are  performed. 
I  also  made  inquiry  concerning  the  rites ;  for  they  tell  the 
deed  which  was  done  to  Adonis  by  a  boar  in  their  own 
country,  and  in  memory  of  his  suffering  they  beat  their 
breasts  each  year,  and  wail  and  celebrate  these  rites,  and 
institute  great  lamentation  throughout  the  country.  But 
when  they  have  bewailed  and  lamented,  first  they  perform 
funeral  rites  to  Adonis  as  if  he  were  dead,  but  afterward 
upon  another  day  they  say  he  lives,  and  they  cast  (dust) 
into  the  air  and  shave  their  heads  as  the  Egyptians  do 
when  Apis  dies.  But  women  such  as  do  not  wish  to  be 
shaven  pay  the  following  penalty :  On  a  certain  day  they 
stand  for  prostitution  at  the  proper  time  ;  and  the  market 
is  open  to  strangers  only,  and  the  pay  goes  as  a  sacrifice 
to  Aphrodite."2  .  .  . 

"But  there  is  also  another  marvel  in  the  country  of 
Byblos  :  a  river  from  Mount  Libanos  empties  into  the  sea. 
The  name  of  the  river  is  Adonis.  But  the  river  each  year 
becomes  bloody,  and  having  lost  its  own  complexion,  falls 
into  the  sea  and  reddens  a  large  part  of  the  sea,  and 
gives  the  signal  for  the  lamentations  to  the  inhabitants  of 
Byblos.  They  say  that  in  these  days  Adonis  is  wounded 
on  Libanos,  and  his  blood  going  into  the  water  changes 
the  river,  and  gives  to  the  stream  its  name.  The  majority 
tell  this.  But  a  certain  man  of  Byblos,  who  seemed  to 

1  See  Pietschmann,  Geschichte  der  Ph&nizier,  p.  200,  and  Journal  of 
Hellenic  Studies,  Vol.  IX,  p.  216. 

2  Lucian,  op.  cit.,  §  6. 


246  SEMITIC   OEIGINS 


me  to  tell  the  truth,  adduced  another  cause  of  the  suffer- 
ing. He  spoke  as  follows :  *  The  river  Adonis,  O  stranger, 
comes  through  Libanos ;  but  Libanos  has  a  great  deal  of 
yellow  soil.  Therefore,  the  hard  winds  in  these  days  set- 
ting upon  the  soil  bear  it  into  the  river  —  the  soil  being 
of  an  especially  red  color ;  and  the  soil  gives  it  its  bloody 
tint ;  and  the  country  is  the  cause  of  this  suffering,  and 
not  the  blood  as  they  say.'  The  Byblite  adduced  such 
causes  to  me,  and  if  he  related  these  things  to  me  accu- 
rately, the  incident  of  the  wind  seems  to  me  especially 
supernatural."1 

It  is  clear  from  these  passages  that  the  myth  of  the 
death  of  the  son  of  the  old  mother  goddess  survived  at 
Gebal  in  much  of  its  primitive  form.  True,  the  myth  had 
taken  on  a  local  coloring,  and  connected  itself  with  local 
circumstances;  but  the  rites  attached  to  the  celebration  of 
the  god's  resurrection  are  in  many  respects  still  primitive. 
Some  progress  has  been  made  since  women  could  be  shorn 
in  lieu  of  a  more  degrading  sacrifice,  if  they  desired,  but 
this  progress  does  not  hide  the  features  in  the  rites  which 
have  survived  from  the  Semitic  matriarchal  past.  The 
worship  of  Ashtart  was  no  doubt  prevalent  at  many  points 
in  Canaan,  whence  it  was  adopted  at  various  times  by  the 
Israelites,  but  we  have  not  now  the  means  of  tracing  it 
in  detail.2 

Another  goddess  which  sprang  from  the  same  root  as 
those  we  have  been  considering,  and  which  exercised  the 
same  functions,  though  called  by  a  slightly  different 
name,  was  the  goddess  Ashera.  In  the  period  repre- 
sented by  the  El-Amarna  tablets  she  was  apparently  the 
goddess  of  a  tribe  called  the  Bne-Ebed- Ashera.3  From  a 
Sumerian  hymn  published  by  Reisner 4  we  learn  that  she 

1  Lucian,  op.  cit.,  §  8. 

2  Cf.  Jud.  2",  10«,  1  Sam.  7*,  Jer.  718,  and  Eze.  8". 

8  See  KB.,  Vol.  V,  No.  53  ft.,  and  cf.  JBL.,  Vol.  X,  p.  82  fl. 

4  See  Mittheilungen  d.  kgl.  Museen  zu  Berlin,  Heft  X,  p.  92  ;  also  a 
hematite  seal  in  ZA.,  Vol.  VI,  p.  161,  an  astronomical  text  in  ZA.,  Vol. 
VI,  p.  241,  and  the  remarks  of  Jensen,  ZA.,  Vol.  XI,  p.  302  ff. 


SURVIVALS  247 


was  the  consort  of  the  god  of  the  Westland,  i.e.,  Hadad. 
The  tablet  from  which  the  hymn  is  published  dates  from 
the  Greek  period.  We  do  not  know  that  the  goddess  was 
worshipped  alone  in  the  fifteenth  century,  though  it  seems 
probable  that  she  was.  If  she  was  then  an  independent 
mother  goddess,  she  might  long  before  the  third  century 
have  become  in  some  localities  the  consort  of  Hadad.  In 
this  latter  character  she  was  practically  identical  with 
Atargatis.  From  this  fact  it  follows  that  from  the  first 
she  must  have  been  the  old  mother  goddess  under  another 
name.  She  was  probably  known  among  the  Aramaeans 
much  earlier  than  this,  for  she  seems  to  have  been  known 
to  Khammurabi,1  king  of  Babylon  about  2300  B.C.  The 
name  of  this  goddess  also  appears  according  to  our  present 
text  in  three  passages  of  the  Old  Testament,2  but  it  is 
thought  that  in  every  case  the  text  has  been  corrupted  or 
glossed,3  and  that  the  original  reading  was  Ashtoreth 
(Ash  tart). 

Hommel  has  pointed  out  that  Athirat,  the  Arabic 
equivalent  of  Ashera,  appears  as  the  consort  of  the  god 
Wadd  in  a  Minsean  inscription.4  Since  the  worship  of 
the  god  Hadad  found  its  way  into  Arabia,  both  as  Hadad 
and  as  Ramman,5  it  may  be  that  the  worship  of  Ashera 
found  its  way  thither  from  Syria  in  the  same  way.  This 
is  not  probable,  however,  since  she  appears  as  the  consort 
of  the  native  Arabian  god  Wadd.  Athirat  is  therefore  to 
be  regarded  as  a  native  Arabian  product,  brought  forth 
by  forces  analogous  to  those  which  produced  her  Syrian 
counterpart. 

It  is  a  well-known  fact  that  Ashera  was  in  the  Old 

1  See  King's  Letters  and  Inscriptions  of  Hammurabi,  No.  66,  and  Hom- 
mel's  Aufsatze  und  Abhandlungen,  Vol.  II,  p.  211  ff. 

*  Of.  Jud.  37,  1  Kgs.  1819,  and  2  Kgs.  23*. 

«Cf.  Moore's  article  "Asherah,"  §  2,  in  Encyc.  Bib.,  and  Budde  in 
New  World,  Vol.  VIII,  p.  734. 

4  Cf.  Expository  Times,  Vol.  XI,  p.  190,  and  Aufsatze  und  Abhand- 
lungen, Vol.  II,  p.  206  ff. 

6  See  above,  p.  227. 


248  SEMITIC  ORIGINS 


Testament  period  a  post  or  pole  which  was  planted  by  the 
altars  of  the  different  gods,1  which  was  sometimes  carved 
into  revolting  shapes,2  and  probably  sometimes  draped.3 
G.  Hoffmann  has  shown*  that  these  posts  originally 
marked  the  limits  of  the  sacred  precincts  of  the  shrine, 
and  in  the  Ma'sub  inscription  the  name  is  equivalent  to 
"sacred  enclosure."  Moore  finds6  in  this  the  explanation 
of  the  use  of  the  word  in  Assyrian  (ashirtu,  ashrdti, 
eshirtu,  eshrdti),  in  the  sense  of  sanctuary. 

It  is  probable  that  the  application  of  the  name  to  the 
goddess  arose  from  the  connection  of  these  points  with 
her  sanctuary.  If  one  or  more  of  these  were  carved  into 
a  rude  representation  of  the  goddess,  it  would  be  very 
natural  for  the  name  to  pass  from  the  post  to  the  deity. 

This  seems  to  have  happened  independently  in  three 
centres, — in  Arabia,  in  Syria,  and  in  Assyria.6  This  pro- 
cess did  not  in  any  way  change  the  nature  or  the  functions 
of  the  deity,  but  simply  gave  her  a  new  name.  As  pointed 
out  above,  Ashera  is  in  the  El-Amarna  tablets  the  goddess 
of  a  tribe,  and,  it  may  be  added,  of  a  sheik  who  was  the 
head  of  a  tribe.  The  suggestion  made  in  1895 7  that  the 
Bne-Ebed- Ashera  is  the  same  clan,  or  the  nucleus  of  it, 
which  appears  in  the  Old  Testament  as  Asher,  still  seems 
most  probable.  The  Egyptian  monuments  show  that 
under  Seti  and  Rameses  II  of  the  nineteenth  Egyptian 
dynasty  this  tribe  was  still  in  Palestine.8  The  Israelitish 
traditions  classed  it  with  the  children  of  Jacob's  concu- 
bines, showing  that  they  had  a  consciousness  that  it  was 
among  the  latest  to  join  the  Israelitish  confederacy.  It  is 
therefore  probably  a  tribe  of  Aramaic  extraction,  which 
became  amalgamated  with  the  Israelites  after  their  settle- 
ment in  Canaan. 

1  Cf.  Moore's  article  "Ashera"  in  Encyc.  Bib.,  and  mine  on  same 
subject  in  Jewish  Encyclopedia. 

2  1  Kgs.  1518.  6  Encyc.  Bib.,  as  above. 
8  2  Kgs.  23*.                                                         «  See  above,  p.  223. 

4  Ueber  einige  phoen.  Inschriften,  p.  26  ff.       7  JBL.,  Vol.  XV,  p.  174. 
8  See  W.  Max  Mtiller's  Asien  und  Europa,  p.  236. 


SURVIVALS  249 


In  all  probability  the  goddess  of  the  tribe  became  a  god 
soon  after  the  El-Amarna  period,  for  the  name  appears  on 
the  Egyptian  monuments  in  its  masculine  form,  as  it  does 
in  the  tribal  name  in  the  Old  Testament.  As  the  Israel- 
itish  nation  was  welded  into  a  confederacy,  the  various 
tribal  gods  were  either  identified  with  Yahwe  or  banished. 
While  the  latter  seems  to  have  been  the  fate  of  the  god  of 
the  tribe  of  Gad,1  the  former  was  the  fortune  of  the  god 
of  the  tribe  of  Asher.  This  appears  from  the  fact  to 
which  Hommel  has  called  attention,2  that  in  Deut.  S329 
Asher  is  an  alternative  name  of  Yahwe.8 

As  the  Phoenicians  in  their  restless  movements  for 
trade  and  colonization  progressed  westward,  they  carried 
the  worship  of  the  goddess  Ashtart  with  them,  and  scat- 
tered it  all  over  the  islands  and  shores  of  the  Mediter- 
ranean. In  many  of  the  localities  where  it  was  thus 
planted  it  can  afterward  be  traced.  For  the  present 
we  shall  confine  our  attention  to  localities  where  the 
Semitic  element  continued  to  be  tolerably  distinct.  There 
are  several  of  the  islands  of  the  Mediterranean  where  this 
was  the  case.  The  sources  of  our  information  are  Phce- 
nician  inscriptions,  Greek  inscriptions,  and  Greek  and 
Roman  writers.  In  the  Greek  sources  the  goddess  is 
usually  called  Aphrodite,  and  in  the  Latin,  Venus;  but 
there  can  be  no  doubt  of  the  identity  of  the  divinity  of 
whom  they  speak. 

In  the  island  of  Cyprus,  which  lies  nearest  to  the  coast 
of  Phoenicia,  this  Semitic  worship  was  naturally  planted 
at  a  very  early  time  —  how  early  we  cannot  tell.  In  the 
Homeric  poems  Aphrodite  is  already  spoken  of  as  Cyprian,4 
and  her  temple  at  Paphos  is  referred  to.6  It  was  then  no 

1  See  Isa.  6511,  and  cf.   Oriental  Studies  of  the   Oriental   Club  of 
Philadelphia,  p.  108. 

2  Aufsatz  und  Abhandlungcn,  Vol.  II,  p.  209. 

•The  passage  should  be  translated,  "Happy  art  thou,  O  Israel,  a 
people  saved  by  Yahwe,  the  shield  of  thy  help,  and  Asher,  the  sword  of 
thy  excellency." 

4  Iliad,  V,  330.  6  Odyssey,  VIII,  362  ff. 


250  SEMITIC   ORIGINS 


doubt  very  old.  Tradition  assigned  its  foundation  to  one 
Cinyras,1  who  plays  a  considerable  part  in  Cyprian  my- 
thology. The  priests  of  the  Paphian  shrine  were  after- 
ward supposed  to  be  his  descendants  and  bore  his  name.8 
Of  the  early  history  of  this  worship  we  have  no  real  data. 
These  Greek  legends  and  myths  can  hardly  be  historical. 
A  number  of  the  German  Assyriologists  believe  that  the 
letters  of  the  king  of  Alashia3  to  the  king  of  Egypt, 
which  were  found  in  the  El-Amarna  correspondence,  are 
really  letters  from  Cyprus ;  but  even  if  they  are,  they  make 
no  mention  of  religious  matters,  and  so  leave  us  as  much 
in  the  dark  with  reference  to  the  religious  status  of  the 
island  in  the  fifteenth  century  B.C.  as  though  we  did  not 
possess  them.  The  Greek  inscriptions  written  in  the 
Cypriotic  syllabary  testify  to  the  existence  of  the  goddess 
at  Paphos,  but  do  little  more  than  that.4  Monuments  have 
been  recovered  which  were  dedicated  to  the  goddess  at 
Paphos  on  behalf  of  various  Ptolemies  from  164-88  B.C.,6 
as  well  as  on  behalf  of  the  Roman  Emperor  Tiberius.6 
These  attest  that  the  worship  was  flourishing  during  those 
centuries.  From  Strabo7  and  Pausanias8  we  learn  that 
the  shrine  at  Paphos  was  still  important  in  their  days, 
while  Johannes  Lydus  9  in  the  sixth  century  A.D.  implies 
that  the  worship  had  then  ceased. 

At  Kition,  in  the  southeastern  part  of  the  island,  traces  of 
a  temple  of  Ashtart  also  appear.10  We  lack,  however,  the 
means  of  tracing  its  history.  One  fragmentary  inscrip- 

1  Iliad,  XI,  19-23,  and  Tacitus,  Hist.,  II,  2,  3. 

2  Tacitus,  Hist.,  II,  2,  3. 

«  Cf.  KB.,  Vol.  V,  Nos.  25-32. 

*  Cf.  Collitz,  Sammlung  der  griechischen  Dialekt-Inschriften,  Gottia- 
gen,  1884.  Vol.  I,  p.  13,  No.  1. 

6  Cf.  Journal  of  Hellenic  Studies,  Vol.  IX,  pp.  229-231,  No.  14 ;  p. 
232  ff.,  No.  21 ;  p.  233  ff.,  No.  24  ;  p.  240,  No.  50. 

«  Journal  of  Hellenic  Studies,  Vol.  IX,  p.  227,  No.  6. 

'  XIV,  6,  3  (683). 

«  VIII,  5,  2. 

9  De  Mensibus,  IV,  45. 

"  Cf.  CIS.,  Pt.  I,  Vol.  I,  Nos.  11  and  86. 


SURVIVALS  251 


tion *  reveals  the  fact  that  a  large  temple  retinue,  consist- 
ing of  sacred  prostitutes  2  or  priests,  slaughterers,  barbers, 
and  slaves  were  maintained.  These  facts  vouch  for  the 
identity  of  the  worship  at  Kition  with  other  phases  of  the 
primitive  Semitic  cult. 

The  temple  of  Ashtart  at  Paphos  has  been  excavated 
and  its  form  may  be  studied  in  considerable  detail.8  It 
was  evidently  a  Semitic  temple,  built  on  the  same  general 
plan  as  the  temple  of  Solomon  at  Jerusalem,  but  with  con- 
siderable variation  in  details.  It  was  more  than  once  in 
later  times  destroyed  by  earthquakes,  and  rebuilt  by  the 
Romans.4  In  the  temple  there  was  no  statue  of  the  god- 
dess, but  she  was  represented  by  an  old  Semitic  masseba.6 
Doves  were  sacred  to  her6  and  many  images  of  them 
have  been  found  in  her  temple.  She  was  regarded  as  a 
mother  goddess,  and  was  addressed  as  "mother."  The 
Semitic  feast  of  the  old  mother  goddess  was  kept  to  her  in 
the  springtime,  when  a  lamb  or  sheep  was  sacrificed  to 
her.7  Only  male  victims  were  sacrificed  to  her,  and  kids 
were  regarded  as  the  best  for  the  purposes  of  divination, 

*  CIS.,  Pt.  I,  Vol.  I,  No.  86. 

8  It  is  probably  thus  that  the  term,  D'Obs,  "dogs,"  should  be  inter- 
preted. The  term  occurs  in  Deut.  2317-18,  where  it  seems  to  mean  "  male 
priestly  prostitute  "  (cf.  Driver's  Deuteronomy,  p.  264  ff.,  and  Steuerna- 
gle's  Deuteronomium  und  Joshua,  p.  86  ff.).  Clement  of  Alexandria  so 
understood  the  term  and  rendered  it  "fornicator"  (Paidagogos,  III,  3). 
One  consecrated  to  a  god  was  perhaps  so  called  because  of  his  fidelity 
in  following  his  god  (cf.  W.  R.  Smith,  Religion  of  the  Semites,  2d  ed.,  p. 
292).  We  have  a  Biblical  instance  in  Caleb,  i.e.,  "the  dog  who  followed 
Yahwe  "  in  Num.  3212.  This  usage  probably  extended  to  Babylonia,  for 
the  real  names  of  the  kings  of  Shirpurla,  commonly  called  Ur-Nina  and  Ur- 
Bau,  were  probably  Kalbi-Nina  and  Kalbi-Bau  (cf.  Radau,  Early  Baby- 
lonian History,  p.  144)  i.e.  "Dog  of  Nina"  and  "Dog  of  Bau." 

8  Cf.  Journal  of  Hellenic  Studies,  Vol.  IX,  pp.  193-215. 

4  Cf.  Journal  of  Hellenic  Studies,  Vol.  IX,  p.  193. 

•Tacitus,  Hist.,  II,  3;  Serv.  Aen.,  I,  720.  Cf.  Hebraica,  Vol.  X, 
p.  46  ff. 

'Antiphanes,  ap.  Athen.,VI,  71,  p.  257;  XIV,  70,  p.  655,  and  the 
"Paphise  columbae"  of  Martial  (VIII,  28). 

7  Johannes  Lydus,  De  Mensibus.  45. 


262  SEMITIC  ORIGINS 


in  which  her  priests  were  thought  to  be  especially  skilful.1 
No  blood  was  shed  upon  her  altar,  and  though  the  masseba 
stood  in  the  open  air  it  was  thought  that  it  was  never 
rained  upon.2  The  devotees  of  the  goddess  were  initiated 
by  impure  rites,3  and  parents  often  dedicated  their  children 
to  the  goddess.*  In  later  times  there  was  much  admixture 
of  Greek  elements  into  the  Paphian  worship,  but  never- 
theless the  Semitic  type  of  goddess  on  the  whole  pre- 
vailed.5 It  was  from  Cyprus  as  the  Greeks  themselves 
believed  that  the  worship  of  Aphrodite  spread  to  the 
islands  and  coast  lands  of  Greece. 

In  Crete  the  worship  of  this  goddess  was  also  estab- 
lished at  an  early  time,  and  the  Cretans  themselves  be- 
lieved that  their  island  was  the  original  home  of  the  cult.6 
In  the  island  of  Rhodes  she  was  worshipped  along  with 
Apollo  and  ^Esculapius,7  who  were  no  doubt  originally 
Baal  and  Eshmun,8  but  who  through  Greek  influence  were 
transformed  into  Greek  gods.  Her  worship  was  also 
planted  in  the  island  of  Malta  by  a  Phrenician  colony,* 
though  the  traces  of  it  which  remain  are  slight.  A  very 
important  and  ancient  seat  of  it  was  at  Eryx  in  the  island 
of  Sicily,  whence  its  influence  spread  through  that  island 
to  Carthage,  and  into  many  parts  of  Italy,  extending 

1  Tacitus,  Hist.,  II,  3. 

2  Tacitus,  Hist.,  II,  3. 

8  Clement  of  Alexandria,  Protreptikos  pros  Hellenes,  pp.   12,   13 ; 
Arnobius,  adv.  Gentes,  V,  19 ;  Justin,  XVIII,  5.     Herodotus,  after  describ- 
ing the  impure  rites  of  this  goddess  at  Babylon  (I,  199),  adds,  "In  some 
parts  of  Cyprus  there  is  a  custom  very  similar." 

*  Cf.  Journal  of  Hellenic  Studies,  VoL  IX,  p.  228,  No.  8 ;  p.  235,  No. 
33 ;  p.  236,  Nos.  35,  39  ;  p.  237,  Nos.  41,  42. 

6  Cf.  Dyer,  The  Gods  of  Greece,  ch.  vii,  and  Driver  in  Hastings's  Dic- 
tionary of  the  Bible,  Vol.  I,  p.  170.  That  vegetation  was  thought  to  be 
connected  with  the  goddess  in  Cyprus  as  in  ancient  Arabia  is  shown  in 
Ohnefalsch-Richter's  Kypros,  pp.  118-126. 

6  Cf.  Diodorus  Siculus,  V,  77,  and  Farnell,  Cults  of  the  Greek  States, 
Vol.  II,  pp.  631-633. 

7  Cf.  Bull,  de  Corr.  Hell,  1880,  p.  139. 

•  See  CIS.,  Pt.  I,  Vol.  I,  No.  143  ;  cf.  also  JAOS.,  Vol.  XXI2,  p.  188  ff. 

9  Cf.  CIS.,  Pt.  I,  Vol.  I,  No.  132. 


SURVIVALS  263 


especially  to  Rome.1  In  Sicily  the  goddess  was  as  else- 
where served  by  a  troop  of  female  priestesses,2  whose 
character  and  functions  we  can  from  our  previous  knowl- 
edge easily  divine.  Here  the  dove  was  also  sacred  to  the 
goddess,  and  there  were  two  feasts,  in  reality  parts  of  the 
same  festival,  the  dates  of  which  were  supposed  to  be  con- 
nected with  the  flight  of  the  doves.8  This  cult  may  be 
traced  further  among  the  islands  and  into  the  mainland  of 
Greece  and  Italy,  but  that  task  belongs  rather  to  another 
part  of  the  work,4  since  the  goddess  there  took  on  such  a 
foreign  character.  It  is  clear  from  the  evidence  already 
cited  that  in  the  Phoenician  colonies  of  the  Mediterranean 
islands  all  the  essential  features  of  the  old  Semitic  mother 
goddess  were  preserved.  At  each  sanctuary  a  certain 
local  coloring  was  given  to  her  myths  as  was  natural  and 
as  was  the  case  in  other  places,  nevertheless  she  remained 
the  unmarried  mother  goddess,  fostering  sexual  love, 
maintaining  a  retinue  of  priests  and  priestesses  who  kept 
the  atmosphere  of  social  life  impure  by  perpetuating  under 
the  guise  of  religion  the  long  outgrown  customs  of  a 
barbarous  civilization. 

It  has  already  been  pointed  out 5  that  the  Semitic  mother 
goddess,  whose  cult  we  can  trace  through  so  many  countries, 
was  also  established  in  North  Africa.  There,  in  the  period 
from  which  our  Punic  inscriptions  come,  she  seems  to  have 
been  in  part  subordinate  to,  and  in  part  superior  to,  her 
masculine  counterpart  Baal-Hamman.  The  name  by  which 
she  was  known  in  Africa  was  Tanith,  which  was,  perhaps, 
given  her  as  the  one  who  increased  life  and  blessings.6 

1  Cf.  Diodorus  Siculus,  IV,  83 ;  Paus.  VIII,  24,  6 ;  Polybius,  I,  65 ; 
Strabo,  VI,  2,  5 ;  and  Virg.  Aen.,  I,  750. 

2  Strabo,  VI,  2,  5.  *  Chapter  VIII. 
8  JElian,  De  Natura  Anamalium,  IV,  2.                    5  Above,  p.  150. 

6  Georg  Hoffmann,  Ueber  einige  Phoen.  Inschr.,  p.  32,  holds  that  the 
name  is  a  rebus,  made  from  the  final  letters  of  mrHPD,  jarr^ys  and  ftfV 
He  believes  that  the  Greek  AtSw,  A«5w  came  from  a  corrupt  pronunciation, 
in  which  the  t's  were  hardened  to  d's  and  then  f  assimilated  as  in  ITQ.  This 
is  ingenious,  but  it  is  not  convincing.  I  would,  with  all  reserve,  suggest 


254  SEMITIC   ORIGINS 


The  superiority  of  Tanith  to  Baal  is  shown  in  the  fact 
that  in  the  votive  inscriptions  she  is  regularly  addressed 
first ; 1  her  subordination  to  him,  in  the  fact  that  officially 
he  seems  to  have  been  the  head  of  their  pantheon.2  That 
she  held  the  chief  place  in  the  popular  thought  is  shown 
by  the  fact  that  no  prayer  for  life  and  blessings  seems  to 
have  been  complete  which  did  not  include  an  address  to 
her.3  As  pointed  out  above,  the  goddess  had  at  some 
time  passed  in  part  through  the  process  of  transformation 
from  feminine  to  masculine,  Baal-Hamman  being  in  fact  a 
differentiation  from  her.4  She  was  still  represented  by  an 
image,  feminine  in  form  but  with  a  bearded  face,  and  is, 
therefore,  addressed  continually  as  "  Tanith  with  the  face 
of  Baal."5 

Tanith  was  a  mother  goddess,  and  upon  her  feast  days 
songs  were  sung  and  deeds  were  enacted  which,  according 
to  Augustine,  shocked  all  modesty.6  Georg  Hoffmann 
has  pointed  out7  that  Dido  is  but  another  form  of  the 
name  Tanith,  and  the  identification  is  accepted  by  others.8 
It  is  no  doubt  correct  to  see  in  Dido  another  form  of 

that  possibly  the  iiame  is  a  noun  of  the  form  of  the  infinitive  from  the 
stem  jm  (cf.  Arab.  ,.o«  and  Eth.  watan).  Such  infinitives  are  formed 
by  the  elision  of  the  1  and  the  addition  of  D,  and  are  not  uncommon  in 
all  the  great  branches  of  Semitic  speech  (cf.  Earth,  Nominalbildung 
in  den  semitischen  Sprachen  [1889J,  p.  122).  The  fourth  stem  of  this  root 
means  in  Arabic  "to  multiply,"  "increase."  The  only  place  where  it 
occurs  in  north  Semitic  so  far  as  I  have  observed  is  in  Phoenician,  where 
it  appears  naturally  as  JJV,  and  is  used  as  a  synonym  of  JW,  "to  give" 
(cf.  the  references  in  Bloch's  Phoenicsiches  Glossar,  p.  33).  If  thus 
derived,  the  name  would  mean  "the  giver,"  "multiplier,"  or  "  increaser," 
and  would  be  most  fitting  for  a  goddess  of  fertility. 

1  Cf.  the  hundreds  of  votive  inscriptions  from  North  Africa  in  CIS., 
Pt.  I,  Vol.  I,  No.  180  ff.,  and  those  published  by  Berger  in  Actes  du 
onzieme  congres  international  des  orientalistes,  Pt.  IV,  p.  273  ff. 

a  Cf.  CIS.,  Pt.  I,  Vol.  I,  Nos.  166,  167.  8  Ibid. 

*  Above,  p.  150. 

*  See  the  references  in  n.  1,  and  also  JAOS.,  Vol.  XXI2,  p.  187. 

6  De  Civitate  Dei,  II,  4. 

7  See  reference  in  p.  253,  n.  6. 

8  Cf.  W.  R.  Smith,  Religion  of  the  Semites,  2d  ed.,  p.  374. 


SURVIVALS  255 


Tanith,  whether  the  name  be  the  same,  or  whether  it  be 
derived  from  another  epithet.1  This  identification  enables 
us  to  see  in  the  tale  of  Dido's  love  for  ^Eneas2  told  by 
Virgil,  another  evidence  of  the  survival  in  Tanith  of  the 
peculiar  characteristics  of  love  which  were  embodied  in 
the  old  Semitic  deity.  Indeed  it  is  probable,  as  Farnell 
has  pointed  out,3  that  the  whole  ^Eneas  story  is  but  a 
translation  into  poetry  of  the  myths  of  this  cult. 

In  later  times,  as  other  Phoenicians  came  into  North 
Africa,  they  brought  with  them  anew  the  worship  of  Ash- 
tart,  so  that  at  times  Ashtart  and  Tanith  appear  side  by  side 
as  different  goddesses.*  This  is  a  late  phenomenon,  how- 
ever, and  by  no  means  disproves  the  original  identity  of 
the  two. 

In  course  of  time  the  cult  of  the  Phrygian  Cybele  pene- 
trated North  Africa,  and  was  probably  fused  with  the 
cult  of  Tanith.  The  pressure  also  of  the  ascetic  reaction 
against  the  gross  practices  of  this  cult  led,  as  it  had  done 
at  Petra,6  to  the  representation  of  the  goddess  as  a  celes- 
tial virgin.6  But  we  have  Augustine's  testimony  that  her 
virginity  was  not  of  a  very  pure  type.  It  is  she,  no  doubt, 
to  whom  Tertullian  refers  under  the  name  of  Ceres.7 

The  temple  of  Tanith-Dido  was  situated  a  little  outside 
the  old  city  of  Carthage,  and  in  the  fourth  century  of  our 
era  was  surrounded  by  a  thorny  jungle,  which  the  popular 
imagination  pictured  as  filled  with  asps  and  dragons,  the 
guardians  of  her  sanctuary.8  Outside  its  walls  a  pyre 

1  It  may  be  from  the  Semitic  root  tn,  "  love,"  from  which  the  name 
David  comes.  Winckler  thinks  that  in  old  Hebrew  and  Phoenician  Tn 
was  the  genus  loci,  Greek  dal^u*.  Altorient.  Forschungen,  pp.  339- 
342. 

«  jEnid,  IV. 

»  Cults  of  the  Greek  States,  Vol.  II,  pp.  638-642. 

*  Cf.  Lidzbarski,  Ephemeris  fur  semitische  Epigraphik,  Vol.  I,  p.  24. 

*  Above,  p.  233  ff. 

6  Augustine,  De  Civitate  Dei,  II,  4. 

7  Cf.  Tertullian,  Ad  Uxorem,  I,  6,  and  De  Exhor.  Cast.,  15. 

8  See  the  evidence  cited  in  W.  R.  Smith's  Religion  of  the  Semites,  2d 
ed.,  p.  374,  and  especially  Justin,  XIX,  1. 


256  SEMITIC   ORIGINS 


was  erected  each  year,  and  the  goddess  was  thought  to 
throw  herself  into  the  flames.1  As  Virgil  represents  this 
as  done  from  love  of  ^Eneas,  it  was  probably  originally  a 
part  of  the  mourning  for  her  beloved  Adonis,  who  was 
evidently  worshipped  here.2  This  topic  will  be  treated 
more  fully  below. 

Passing  now  from  the  West  to  the  East,  we  have  some 
of  the  oldest  historical  traces  of  the  survival  of  this  cult 
at  Erech,  the  ancient  Uruk,  modern  Warka,  in  southern 
Babylonia.  Possibly  the  goddesses  which  survived  at 
Shirpurla  are  older,  or  equally  old.  These  the  exigencies 
of  our  argument  led  us  to  treat  in  a  previous  chapter,3  so 
that  no  more  need  be  said  of  them  here.  The  first  dis- 
tinct mention  of  Ishtar  of  Erech  is  in  the  inscriptions  of 
Lugalzaggisi,  about  4000  B.C.  If  she  is  mentioned  at  all 
earlier  than  that,  it  is  by  the  kings  of  Shirpurla,  and  they 
do  not  distinguish  her  from  the  Nana  of  their  own  city. 
Lugalzaggisi  calls  her  by  the  epithets  Umu  and  Nina- 
gidkhadu,  calls  her  priestess  and  mistress  of  Erech.4 
Later,  if  I  do  not  misinterpret  him,  he  calls  Erech  the 
land  of  Ishtar.6  Something  like  twelve  or  fifteen  hun- 
dred years  later  Ur-Gur6  and  Dungi,7  of  the  kingdom 
of  Ur,  repaired  her  temple.  Ur-Ninib,8  Libit-Ishtar,9  and 

1  See  references  in  preceding  note. 

2  See  the  article  "  The  Genesis  of  the  God  Eshmun,"  JAOS.,  Vol.  XXI2, 
pp.  188-190.  8  Above,  p.  185  ft 

*  OBI.,  No.  87,  col.  i,  11.  30-34;  cf.  Radau,  Early  Babylonian  History, 
p.  133. 

6  Ibid.,  col.  ii,  1.  43  ff.  It  reads:  KI  NANA  URUG-ki-i  LU  DAGAL 
GUR-A-KIM  MUR  MU-DA-GIL,  i.e.  "The  land  of  Ishtar,  Erech,  like  a 
sheep  ready  for  shearing,  I  walled  in  with  bricks."  This  reading  presup- 
poses that  the  determinative  dingir  has  been  omitted  before  Nana,  and  the 
gunu  signs  from  the  ideogram  for  Erech.  Such  mistakes  are  not  impos- 
sible in  this  inscription.  Cf.  RU  for  NI,  col.  iii,  1.  37,  and  the  variant. 
Radau,  op.  cit.,  reads  KI  NANA  URUG  as  Ki-inanni-ab. 

6  I  R.,  1,  No.  6.    Cf.  KB.,  Vol.  IIP,  p.  79. 

»  I  R.,  1,  No.  3.  Cf.  KB.,  Vol.  IIP,  p.  81.  Also  OBL,  No.  15 ;  cf.  Radau, 
op.  cit.,  p.  226. 

« IV  R.,  35,  No.  5.    Cf.  KB.,  Vol.  IIP,  p.  85.    Cf.  also  OBL,  No.  18. 

»  I  R.,  3,  No.  18.    Cf.  KB.,  Vol.  IIP,  p.  87. 


SURVIVALS  257 


Ishmi-Dagan,1  all  of  the  dynasty  of  Isin,  by  repairing  her 
temple,  or  in  some  other  way  indicate  their  reverence  for 
her.  About  the  year  2280  B.C.  her  temple  at  Erech  was 
destroyed  by  the  Elamites,  who  captured  a  statue  of  her 
and  took  it  to  Elam.2  It  was  probably  the  warfare  con- 
nected with  this  episode  which  has  become  the  nucleus  of 
the  Gilgamish  epic.8 

In  the  middle  Babylonian  period  Karaindash  (about 
1450  B.C.)  consecrated  to  her  an  inscription.4  Later,  in 
the  seventh  century,  Esarhaddon  restored  her  temple  and 
worshipped  her,6  and  Assurbanipal  brought  back  from 
Elam  the  idol  which  had  been  taken  thither  from  Erech 
1635  years  before.6  In  the  next  century  Nebuchadnezzar 
once  more  repaired  her  temple,7  and  after  this  time  we  lose 
sight  of  her  history.  The  temple  upon  which  so  many 
kings  had  worked  was  called  lanna,  a  name  which  it  kept 
from  century  to  century. 

These  various  sovereigns  by  their  devotion  attest  the 
importance  of  the  goddess  of  Erech,  but  our  chief  source 
of  information  concerning  her  is  the  Gilgamish  epic. 
This  epic  is  composed  of  different  strata  which  had  their 
origin  in  different  periods  and  different  centres,  and  which 
are  collected  about  the  struggles  of  the  hero  Gilgamish, 
against  the  Elamites,  probably  in  the  war  of  about  2280 
B.C.8  In  one  of  the  oldest  strata  of  the  poem,  Ishtar, 
under  the  name  Aruru,9  is  represented  as  making  a  man 
from  a  bit  of  clay  as  Yahwe  does  in  the  second  chapter  of 

1 1  R.,  2,  No.  5,  I  and  II.    Cf.  KB.,  Vol.  IIP,  p.  87. 

*  V  R.,  6,  107  ff.    Cf .  KB. ,  Vol.  II,  p.  209  ff. 

8  Cf.  Haupt,  Nimrodepos,  pp.  24,  67,  and  KB.,  Vol.  VI,  p.  159  ff. 

*  IV  R.,  36,  No.  3.    Cf.  KB.,  Vol.  Ill1,  p.  163. 

6  Cf.  PAOS.,  May,  1891,  Hebraica,  Vol.  VIII,  p.  113  ff.,  and  Vol.  X, 
p.8ff. 

6  See  references  under  n.  2. 

7  Cf.   I  R.,  65,  col.  II.  60  ff.,  KB.,  Vol.  Ill2,  pp.  36,  37,  and  V  R., 
34,  col.  II.    33,  KB.,  Vol.  Ill2,  pp.  42,  43;   also  Hebraica,  Vol.  X, 
pp.  12,  13. 

8  Cf.  Jastrow,  Religion  of  Babylonia  and  Assyria,  ch.  xxiii. 

9  See  Jastrow,  Eeligion  of  Babylonia  and  Assyria,  p.  448. 

8 


258  SEMITIC   ORIGINS 


Genesis.1  A  little  later  this  man,  who  is  covered  with 
hair  and  is  thoroughly  wild,  consorting  only  with  beasts, 
is  enticed  by  intercourse  with  one  of  Ishtar's  consecrated 
harlots  2  to  abandon  his  animals  and  to  enter  upon  civilized 
life.  In  this  story,  as  already  pointed  out,3  we  have  the 
survival  of  one  of  the  primitive  notions  connected  with 
the  Semitic  mother  goddess,  viz. :  the  fact  that  civilization 
arose  from  consciousness  of  sex.  In  appreciation  of  this 
fact  there  were  maintained  for  Ishtar,  at  Erech,  three 
classes  of  harlot  priestesses.4  Here,  too,  those  rites  which 
Herodotus  calls  shameful 5  were  also  cherished. 

In  another  part  of  this  epic,  which  is  also  old,  Ishtar 
is  represented  as  a  deified  woman  of  the  early  Semitic 
times,  who  changed  her  husbands  at  will.6  Tammuz,  the 
husband  of  her  youth,  she  brought  to  mourning  each  year ; 
various  animals  —  for  the  myth  originated  in  a  totemistic 
age7 — had  been  married  by  her,  and  through  her  had 
come  to  grief.  She  then  desired  to  wed  Gilgamish,  but 
he,  learning  wisdom  by  what  the  others  had  suffered, 
declined  the  honor.  Such  conceptions  of  her  are  another 
proof  of  the  character  of  the  goddess  which  was  fostered 
at  Erech.  In  order  that  Gilgamish  should  not  escape  her, 
Ishtar  had  a  bull  created  to  torment  him.  These  myths 
which  represent  the  goddess  as  such  a  harmful  being, 
probably  embody  in  story  the  perception  of  the  primitive 
Semite  that  the  unrestrained  service  of  this  sexual  goddess 
was  fraught  with  physical  peril. 

1  Cf.  Haupt,  Nimrodepos,  p.  8,  KB.,  Vol.  VI,  p.  121.    Cf.  Jastrow's 
article  "Adam  and  Eve  in  Babylonian  Literature"  in  AJSL.,  Vol.  XV, 
pp.  193-214. 

2  Haupt,  op.  cit.,  p.  11;  cf.  KB.,  Vol.  VI,  p.  127.     Cf.  Hebraica,  Vol. 
X,  p.  3. 

8  Above,  p.  84. 

4  Cf.  KB.,  Vol.  VI,  pp.  176,  177  ;  Jastrow,  Religion  of  Babylonia  and 
Assyria,  p.  475,  and  Haupt,  Nimrodepos,  p.  49, 11.  1,  2. 

s  Bk.  I,  199. 

«  Haupt,  op.  cit.,  p.  42  ff. ;  KB.,  Vol.  VI,  p.  171.  Cf.  Hebraica,  Vol. 
X,  p.  5  ff. 

7  Above,  p.  37. 


SURVIVALS  259 


The  eleventh  tablet  of  the  epic  contains  the  account  of 
the  flood.  This,  as  Jastrow  has  pointed  out,1  originated 
in  connection  with  the  city  of  Surippak,  in  quite  a  differ- 
ent environment  from  the  portions  of  the  story  we  have 
hitherto  considered.  As  it  now  stands,  however,  it  is 
probably  in  mythology  assimilated  to  the  rest ;  and  in  it 
Ishtar  is  the  mother  of  mankind  who  mourns  that  her  off- 
spring is  destroyed.2 

It  is  clear  from  a  passage  in  the  sixth  tablet  of  the  epic 
already  referred  to,3  that  the  custom  of  wailing  for  Tam- 
muz  was  a  part  of  the  ritual  of  the  Ishtar  cult  at  Erech. 
It  is  possible  that  the  myth  embodied  in  the  poem  which 
celebrates  Ishtar's  descent  to  the  lower  world  originated, 
or  at  least  was  cherished,  at  Erech.  I  formerly  held  on 
mythological  grounds  that  it  was  probably  connected 
especially  with  Nineveh,4  but  the  same  mythological  data 
would  lead  us  to  connect  it  with  Khallabi6  and  perhaps 
with  Shirpurla.6  As  the  Semitic  settlements  at  these 
latter  towns  are  older  than  the  settlement  at  Nineveh,  it 
can  hardly  have  originated  in  the  latter  city.  In  the  Gil- 
garnish  epic  Ishtar  is  called  daughter  of  Anu 7  instead  of 
daughter  of  Sin  as  in  Ishtar's  descent.8  The  idea  that  she 
was  daughter  of  Anu  may  not  have  been  the  primitive 
one,  however,  so  that  it  is  quite  possible  that  the  legend 
of  her  descent  to  the  lower  world  belongs  to  Erech  in  spite 
of  this.  Jensen  conjectured9  that  the  idea  which  finds 
expression  in  the  poem,  that  the  underworld  is  surrounded 
by  seven  walls,  was,  in  the  first  instance,  suggested  by  the 
seven  walls  of  Erech.  Be  this  as  it  may,  if  the  poem  was 
known  at  Erech,  which  is  very  probable,  the  conception 
which  it  embodies  that  when  Ishtar  disappeared  from  the 

1  Religion  of  Babylonia  and  Assyria,  p.  494  ff. 

2  See  Haupt,  Nimrodepos,  p.  139,  11. 117-125,  and  KB.,  Vol.  VI,  p.  239. 
8  Above,  p.  258.  6  §ee  below. 

4  Hebraica,  Vol.  IX,  p.  145,  n.  «  See  above,  p.  199. 

7  Cf.  Haupt,  op  cit.,  p.  46,  1.  107,  and  KB.,  Vol.  VI,  p.  173. 

8  Cf.  IV  R.,  31,  2 ;  cf.  KB.,  Vol.  VI,  p.  81. 

9  Kosmologie,  p.  172  ff. 


260  SEMITIC   ORIGINS 


earth,  all  desire  in  man  and  beast  ceased,1  would  be 
another  evidence  of  the  survival  at  Erech  in  almost  their 
primitive  purity  of  the  earliest  conceptions  of  Ishtar. 

Another  town  where  the  cult  of  Ishtar  flourished  was 
Khallabi,  though  but  few  references  to  her  worship  there 
have  as  yet  been  recovered.  From  the  fact  that  Khallabi 
is  mentioned  on  a  contract  tablet  of  the  reign  of  Cambyses, 
found  at  Abu-Habba,  Jensen  concludes  that  it  was  situated 
near  Sippar.2  We  have  but  two  glimpses  of  this  worship, — 
one  in  the  reign  of  Arad-Sin,  king  of  Larsa,3  and  the  other 
in  that  of  Khammurabi,  king  of  Babylon.4  Beyond  the 
fact  that  there  was,  in  this  city,  a  temple  of  the  goddess 
in  which  one  of  these  kings  placed  a  votive  offering,  and 
which  the  other  repaired,  we  are  able  to  learn  little  of  her 
worship. 

The  ideogram  for  Khallabi  occurs  without  the  deter- 
minative for  place  in  one  of  the  inscriptions  of  Gudea  in 
a  passage  descriptive  of  one  of  the  goddesses  of  Shirpurla.5 
The  passage  is  a  difficult  one  as  both  Jensen  and  Amiaud 
recognize,  but  its  meaning  seems  to  be  rendered  clearer  if 
we  understand  the  ideogram  as  Khallabi.6  The  fact  that 
it  lacks  the  determinative  for  place  is  not  a  serious  objec- 
tion to  this  interpretation,  since  Shirpurla  itself  is  some- 

1  IV  R.,  31,  76  ff.,  and  KB.,  Vol.  VI,  p.  87. 

2  Cf.  Strassmaier's  Cambyses,  No.  48,  1.  2,  and  Jensen,  KB.,  Vol.  Ill1, 
p.  106,  n.  6.     Cf.  also  Zimmern,  ZA.,  Vol.  Ill,  p.  97. 

8  PSBA.,  Vol.  XIII,  pp.  158,  159. 

*  KB.,  Vol.  IIP,  p.  106  ff. 

6  On  statue  F,  De  Sarzec,  Decouvertes,  pi.  14,  col.  i,  1.  16  ;  cf.  Amiaud, 
Records  of  the  Past,  New  Ser.,  Vol.  II,  p.  98,  and  Jensen,  KB.,  Vol.  Ill1, 
pp.  54,  65. 

6  The  passage  would  then  read:  (1.  12)  Din^r-GA-TUM-DUG  (13) 
NIN-A-NI  (14)  SHIR-PUR-LA-fo  (15)  URU-KI-AG-GA-NI-TA  (16)  TE- 
UNU-USLANUGUNU-ZA-A  (col.  ii,  1.  1)  MU-NI-TU-DA-A  (2)E- 
dfn^ir-GA-TUM-DUG  (3)  NIN-A-NA  (4)  RU-NI,  i.e.  "To  Gatumdug, 
his  mistress  for  (the  sake  of)  Shirpurla,  the  city  which  she  loved  (at) 
Khallabi,  where  she  bore  him,  the  temple  of  Gatumdug,  his  mistress, 
he  built."  On  this  view  the  ideogram  for  Khallabi  has  the  sign  TE  in 
addition  to  those  which  appear  in  it  later,  but  for  TE-UNU  =  UNU  cf. 
Briinnow,  List,  No.  7721.  For  the  order  and  identity  of  the  other  signs 


SURVIVALS  261 


times  thus  defectively  written.1  This  passage  makes  it 
probable  that  Khallabi  was  a  colony  or  dependency  of 
Shirpurla  in  the  earlier  time,  and  that  the  worship  of  the 
goddess  reached  this  town  through  Shirpurla. 

Passing  northward  from  Babylonia  to  Assyria,  the  city 
of  Nineveh  seems  to  have  been  another  town  which  re- 
garded Ishtar  as  its  tutelary  divinity.  Her  connection 
with  this  capital  of  the  Assyrian  empire  is  indicated  by 
the  following  facts :  (1)  The  city  was  called  in  Assyrian 
Ninua,  a  name  which  we  have  already  seen  to  be  a  Semi- 
tization  through  a  folk  etymology  of  the  Sumerian  Nind, 
which  was  a  part  of  the  city  of  Shirpurla.2  The  identity 
of  the  two  names  is  shown  by  the  fact  that  they  are 
expressed  by  the  same  ideogram.  (2)  By  the  fact  that 
Ishtar,  the  goddess  of  this  capital  city,  is  constantly  asso- 
ciated with  Ashur,  the  god  of  the  older  capital  from  which 
Assyria  took  its  name,  as  one  of  the  two  leading  deities 
of  the  country.  The  chief  temple  in  Nineveh,  Ibarbar, 
was  a  temple  of  Ishtar.8 

The  historical  inscriptions  of  Assyria  contain  many 
references  to  this  goddess,4  but  beyond  the  fact  that 
she  was  considered  to  be  "the  firstborn  of  the  gods" 
(i.e.  as  the  source  and  author  of  all  life),  and  the 
spouse  of  Ashur,  these  inscriptions  contain  little  infor- 
mation concerning  her.  The  fact  that  a  king  like 
Assurbanipal  could  import  to  Nineveh  literature  like 
the  poem  of  Ishtar's  descent,  suggests  that  from  his 
youth  he  had  known  like  traditions  and  like  practices 

of  the  ideogram,  cf.  Thureau  Dangin's  Hecherches  sur  Vorigine  Vecriture 
cuneiforme,  p.  48.  Gatumdug  was,  as  we  saw  above,  sometimes  an  epi- 
thet of  Bau,  but  here,  of  Nana. 

1  Cf.  De  Sarzec,  Decouvertes,  pi.  31,  No.  1, 1.  2  and  pi.  2««r,  No.  2,  col. 
i,  1.  3. 

a  Cf.  above,  pp.  187  and  196  ff. 

•Cf.  ZA.,  VoL  V,  p.  79,  1.  40,  and  II  R.,  66,  No.  2,  1.  9;  Smith's 
Assurbanipal,  p.  305,  1.  9  ;  also  Hebraica,  Vol.  IX,  p.  143. 

*  These  are  collected  in  Hebraica,  Vol.  IX,  pp.  132-143  and  166, 
167. 


262  SEMITIC   ORIGINS 


in  connection  with  the  worship  of  the  goddess  of  his 
native  city.1 

Arbela,  a  city  of  Assyria  to  the  eastward  of  Nineveh, 
was  also  the  seat  of  an  old  shrine  of  Ishtar.  The  begin- 
nings of  her  worship  there  are  shrouded  in  a  darkness 
even  more  dense  than  that  which  covers  the  beginnings 
of  most  of  the  Mesopotamian  cities.  We  cannot  even 
guess  from  what  part  of  southern  Mesopotamia  the  immi- 
grants who  settled  Arbela  came.  The  honor  in  which 
the  Ishtar  of  Arbela  was  held  toward  the  end  of  the 
Assyrian  empire  seems  to  point  to  a  considerable  an- 
tiquity for  her  worship  there,  but  we  obtain  historical 
glimpses  of  it  only  in  the  reigns  of  Sennacherib,  Esar- 
haddon,  and  Assurbanipal.2  By  these  kings  the  Ishtar  of 
Arbela  is  distinguished  from  the  Ishtar  of  Nineveh.  In 
the  earlier  reigns,  if  such  a  distinction  was  made,  it  has 
not  been  reflected  in  the  literature  hitherto  recovered. 

At  Arbela,  Ishtar  continued  to  the  close  of  Assyrian 
history  to  be  an  unmarried  mother  goddess.  As  a  mother 
she  was  anxious  for  the  welfare  of  her  people,  and  conse- 
quently ready  to  defend  them  against  all  their  enemies. 
Thus  she  became  the  goddess  of  war,  to  whom  appeal  was 
naturally  made  in  times  of  especial  danger.3  In  the 
reigns  of  Esarhaddon  and  Assurbanipal  she  seems  to  have 
been  much  sought  after  as  the  giver  of  oracles  and  the 
revealer  of  the  future  fortunes  of  her  worshippers.4  Con- 
nected with  her  temple  at  Arbela  there  seems  to  have 
been  an  observatory  from  which  astronomical  reports 
were  sent  to  the  king.6 

These  numerous  and  multiform  survivals  of  the  Ishtar 

1  This  view  is  confirmed  by  Macrobius  (Saturnalia,  I,  21),  who  speaks 
of  the  worship  of  Adonis  among  the  Assyrians  as  well  as  among  the 
Phoanicians. 

2  Cf.  Hebraica,  Vol.  IX,  pp.  158-163. 
8  Cf.  Smith's  Assurbanipal,  p.  119  ff. 

<Cf.  IV  R.,  61,  AJSL.,  Vol.  XIV,  267-277,  and  the  references  in 
Hebraica,  Vol.  IX,  pp.  160,  161. 

6  See,  for  example,  the  texts  in  III  R.,  61. 


SURVIVALS  263 


cult,  which  project  themselves  far  into  civilizations  which 
could  never  have  originated  them,  are,  to  him  who  has 
an  eye  to  read,  sufficient  evidence  of  the  existence  among 
the  primitive  Semites  of  such  a  social  order  and  such  a 
religion  as  that  which  is  outlined  in  the  second  and  third 
chapters  of  this  work. 

It  was  suggested  in  a  former  chapter J  that  the  primi- 
tive Arabic  environment  and  the  early  Semitic  social 
organization  combined  to  create  for  the  primitive  Semitic 
pantheon  a  goddess  and  her  son.  The  transformations  and 
survivals  of  the  goddess  having  now  been  traced,  it  remains 
to  inquire  to  what  extent  the  primitive  god,  her  son, 
survived.  In  the  course  of  the  preceding  argument  it  has 
been  frequently  pointed  out  that,  where  the  goddess 
was  transformed,  the  primitive  god,  her  child,  may  have 
been  merged  into  the  resultant  god.  In  many  portions  of 
the  Semitic  territory,  however,  his  distinct  survival  can 
be  clearly  traced. 

Among  the  Nabathseans  he  survived  as  Dhu-'l-Shara.2 
The  polemics  which,  in  this  region  as  elsewhere,  attended 
the  propagation  of  early  Christianity,  caused  the  fact  to  be 
recorded  that  Dhu-'l-Shara  was  regarded  as  the  son  of  the 
old  mother  goddess.3  Of  the  cult  of  this  god  we  have 
little  further  evidence.  The  inscriptions  which  make 
mention  of  him  record  the  consecration  of  votive  objects 
or  invoke  his  curse  upon  the  violators  of  tombs.  From 
analogy  we  conclude  that  he  was  in  character  probably 
identical  with  Tammuz  and  Adonis,  who  were  elsewhere 
sons  of  kindred  goddesses.  This  conjecture  receives  some 
confirmation  from  the  fact  that  Herodotus  calls  him 
Dionysos.4 

In  Babylonia  this  god  seems  to  have  survived  under 
different  forms.  The  Sumerian  name  by  which  he  is  most 
commonly  known  is  Dumu-zi,  or  Tammuz,  "  child  of  life." 
Although  this  name  is  once  applied  to  a  goddess,6  it  ordi- 

1  Chapter  III,  p.  85  ff.  •  Cf.  Epiphanius,  Panarion,  LI. 

«  CIS.,  Pt.  H,  Vol.  I,  No.  190-199.     *  Bk.  Ill,  8.      6  Above,  p.  211  ff. 


264  SEMITIC   ORIGINS 


narily  refers  to  a  god  who  is  variously  called  the  "  offspring," J 
"the  son  of  Ishtar,"2  and  the  "husband  of  her  youth."8 
He  was  supposed  to  die  periodically  and  was  then  bewailed. 
Ishtar,  once  at  least,  and,  perhaps,  regularly,  was  thought 
to  go  to  the  underworld  for  him  and  to  bring  him  back  to 
life.4  He  is  generally  recognized  as  a  god  of  vegetation  5 
and  of  the  underworld.6 

At  Shirpurla  there  was  a  god  called  Ningishzida,  who 
was  associated  with  the  goddess  Bau,7  and  who  seems  to 
have  possessed  many  of  the  characteristics  of  Tammuz. 
In  the  Adapa  legend  Ningishzida  and  Tammuz  are  classed 
together  and  play  the  same  part ;  both  are  intercessors  for 
the  life  of  Adapa,  and  both  are  keepers  of  the  gate  of  Anu.8 
As  pointed  out  above,9  Ningishzida  seems  to  have  been  a 
transformed  Ishtar,  but  if  so,  Tammuz  has  been  swallowed 
up  in  him.  The  way  in  which,  in  Semitic  antiquity,  the 
name  of  a  deity  constituted  that  deity  a  separate  person- 
ality is  well  illustrated  by  the  way  Tammuz  and  Ningish- 
zida are  in  the  Adapa  story  put  side  by  side  as  two  distinct 
gods. 

Jensen  regards  Tammuz  as  chthonic  ; 10  Jastrow  regards 
him  as  a  solar  deity.11  Probably  both  are  right.  If,  as  we 
suppose,12  he  was  associated  by  primitive  Semites  with 
objects  in  an  oasis,  he  was  a  chthonic  god  connected  with 
vegetation.  The  yearly  death  of  vegetation  and  its  sub- 
sequent resurrection  would,  since  it  corresponded  to  the 
movements  of  the  sun,  naturally  lead  in  time  to  the  identi- 
fication of  Tammuz  with  the  sun.  That  would,  however, 
be  a  later  view.  In  primitive  times  the  god  was  chthonic. 

In  Phoenicia  and  the  West  the  same  god  survived  under 

1 II  R.,  36,  54.  2  II  R.,  69,  col.  ii,  1.  9. 

8  IV  R.,  31,  47,  and  Nimrodepos,  p.  44  ;  cf.  KB.,  Vol.  VI,  pp.  168, 169. 

4  IV  R.,  31,  and  Jeremias's  Leben  nach  dem  Tode. 

6  Jensen,  Kosmologie,  p.  197  ff.        8  Cf.  KB.,  Vol.  VI,  pp.  96-99. 

6  Jensen,  op.  cit.,  p.  225.  9  p.  190  ff. 

7  Above,  p.  190  ff.  10  Kosmologie,  p.  197  ff. 

11  Religion  of  Babylonia  and  Assyria,  p.  547  ff. 

12  Hebraica,  Vol.  X,  p.  74,  and  above,  p.  85  ff. 


SURVIVALS  265 


other  names.  Although  Ezekiel  called  him  Tammuz,1 
Ezekiel  lived  in  Babylonia  and  no  doubt  used  the  Baby- 
lonian name  or  a  corrupted  form  of  it,2 — a  name  otherwise 
unknown  in  the  West.8  The  clearest  description  of  the 
god  which  we  have  for  this  part  of  the  Semitic  world  is 
Lucian's  account  of  the  worship  of  Adonis  at  Biblos 
(Gebal).4  Here  the  myth  had  it  that  the  god  was  killed 
by  the  tusk  of  a  boar,  and  the  reddening  of  the  river  by 
the  highly  colored  soil  was  held  to  be  the  result  of  shed- 
ding the  blood  of  the  god.  The  sexual  rites  connected 
with  his  worship  at  this  place  make  it  very  clear  that  his 
cult  was  a  survival  from  primitive  Semitic  times.  Later, 
the  myth  was  interpreted  as  a  nature  myth,  the  tusk  of 
the  boar  being  regarded  as  the  inclement  winter  and  the 
resurrection  of  the  god  as  his  victory  over  the  first  six 
signs  of  the  zodiac.5 

The  name  Adonis,  by  which  Lucian  designates  this  deity, 
is  simply  the  Semitic  epithet  Adon,  "Lord";  it  was  not 
the  real  name  of  the  god.  As  I  have  pointed  out  else- 
where,6 the  real  name  of  this  deity  was  probably  Eshmun. 
The  reasons  for  considering  Eshmun  as  a  Tammuz  are  : 
1.  That  the  epithet  Adon  was  frequently  applied  to  Esh- 
mun, as  the  name  Eshmun-Adon,  which  was  quite  popular, 
shows.  2.  Eshmun  was  a  very  popular  god  among  the 
Phoenicians,  —  as  popular  as  one  would  expect  Tammuz  to 
be.  3.  Eshmun  was  a  god  of  the  healing  art  and  was 
identified  with  the  Greek  ^sculapius.7  Several  scholars 
identify  him  also  with  lolaos,  who  in  a  Semitic  myth  in 
Greek  dress,  saved  the  life  of  Heracles.8  Similar  charac- 

1  Ch.  8".  2  Dumuzu  or  Duzu.    Cf.  above,  p.  263. 

8  Cf.  Baethgen,  Beitrage  zur  semitischen  Seligionsgeschichte,  p.  44. 
Cf.  also  JAOS.,  Vol.  XXI2,  p.  188. 

4  De  Syria  Dea,  §§  6,  8 ;  quoted  above,  p.  245. 

6  Macrobius,  Saturnalia,  I,  21.  •  JAOS.,  Vol.  XXIs,  p.  188  ft. 

i  CIS.,  Ft.  I,  Vol.  I,  No.  143.  On  ^sculapius,  cf.  Dyer's  Gods  of 
Greece,  pp.  220-256. 

•  See  W.  R.  Smith,  Religion  of  the  Semites,  2d  ed.,  p.  469,  and  Pietsch- 
Hiann,  Phcenizier,  p.  181. 


266  SEMITIC   ORIGINS 


teristics  seem  to  have  pertained  to  Tammuz.  If  Jeremias 
is  correct  in  his  interpretation  of  the  enigmatical  lines  at 
the  end  of  the  poem  on  Ishtar's  descent  to  the  lower 
world,1  appeal  could  be  made,  on  the  day  of  Tammuz,  for 
the  restoration  of  the  dead  to  life.  Such  restoration  was 
but  a  heightened  form  of  healing  the  sick.  4.  As  the 
worship  of  Tammuz  was  closely  connected  with  the  wor- 
ship of  Ishtar-Ashtart,  so  was  the  worship  of  Eshmun  ; 
and  also  as  we  should  naturally  expect  with  that  of  Baal, 
the  transformed  Ashtart.  At  Carthage,  Tanith-Ashtart 
and  Baal  were  worshipped  in  the  temple  of  Eshmun;2 
while  Hannibal  in  ratifying  the  treaty  with  Philip  of 
Macedon,  swore  by  Heracles  (Baal)  and  lolaos  (Esh- 
mun).3 Once  Eshmun  and  Ashtart  are  compounded  into  a 
single  deity,4 — a  fact  which  points  strongly  to  a  conscious- 
ness of  identity  of  function,  —  an  identity  which  in  turn 
points  to  kinship  of  origin.  At  Sidon  his  worship  was 
very  popular  and  took  rank  with  that  of  Baal  and  Ashtart.5 
At  Kition  and  Idalion  in  Cyprus,  where  there  were  im- 
portant temples  of  Ashtart,6  the  worship  of  Eshmun  also 
flourished.  This  is  proven  by  the  many  proper  names  on 
the  monuments  from  these  places,  into  which  the  name 
Eshmun  enters  as  an  element.  Eshmun  was,  in  the  same 
region,  called  "Melqart,"  as  several  inscriptions  show.7 
This  title,  meaning  "  king  of  the  city,"  applies  usually  to 
the  Tyrian  Baal,  and  its  application  to  Eshmun  probably 
indicates  a  conscious  union  of  Eshmun  with  that  Baal.8 
Such  a  union  with  Baal,  like  the  union  with  Ashtart,  points 
to  a  similarity  of  function,  and  consequently  of  origin,  for 
the  two  gods.  As  Baal  was  a  transformed  Ashtart,  this 

1  Cf.  Leben  nach  dem  Tode,  p.  7.  8  Polybius,  vii,  9,  2. 

2  CIS.,  Pt.  I,  Vol.  I,  No.  252.  *  CIS.,  Pt.  I,  Vol.  I,  No.  245. 
6  Ibid.,  No.  3. 

6  Cf.  CIS.,  as  above,  No.  86,  Journal  of  Hellenic  Studies,  1888,  pp. 
175-206  ;  Tacitus,  Historia,  II,  2,  3  ;  Pausanias,  viii,  5,  2,  etc. 

7  CIS.,  Pt.  I,  Vol.  I,  Nos.  24-28. 

8  See  the  article  "West  Semitic  Deities  with  Compound  Names"  in 
JBL.,  Vol.  XX,  p.  22  fi. 


SURVIVALS  267 


fact  points  ultimately  to  a  primitive  Semitic  origin  for 
both  Ashtart  and  Eshmun,  —  or  in  other  words  to  the  fact 
that  Eshmun  was  a  Tainmuz.  5.  With  Eshmun  as  ^Escu- 
lapius  there  are  associated  two  accounts1  of  exposure  to 
death  and  deliverance  from  it  which  approximate  the 
death  and  resurrection  of  Tammuz.  These  accounts  are 
probably  variant  versions  of  the  myth  which  Lucian  tells 
of  Adonis  at  Gebal.  In  all  probability,  therefore,  the 
god  who  is  called  Tammuz  in  Babylonia,  Dhu-'l-Shara  in 
north  Arabia,  and  was  known  to  the  Greeks  at  Gebal  as 
Adonis,  was  known  among  the  Phoenicians  generally  as 
Eshmun.2  This  variety  of  name  is  due  to  the  fact  that 
the  primitive  Semitic  appellation  did  not  survive. 

The  myth  of  the  death  of  the  deity  sometimes  attached 
to  the  primitive  goddess  rather  than  to  the  god.  This  was 
apparently  the  case  at  Carthage,  where  Dido,  it  was  said, 
yearly  threw  herself  to  death.3  Such  a  variation  is  another 
indication  of  the  close  connection  between  the  primitive 
goddess  and  her  son. 

In  primitive  Arabia  the  conditions  of  the  country  would 
produce  two  kinds  of  clans.  On  the  oases  the  communal 
clan,  devoted  to  the  worship  of  the  mother  goddess,  would 
flourish.4  The  flocks  and  the  caravan  trade  would  lead  to 
the  organization  of  the  republican  clan,  the  more  hazard- 
ous life  of  which  would  lead  to  the  worship  of  the  ideal 
masculine  character.  Such  clans  are  found  in  Arabia 
to-day,6  and  doubtless  were  called  into  existence  in  prehis- 
toric times  by  the  peculiar  economic  character  of  Arabia. 

1  Cf.  Pausanias,  II,  26*-« 

2  What  the  name  of  Eshmun  means  and  how  it  originated,  it  is  hard 
to  say.     It  was  probably  originally  some  kind  of  an  epithet.     Of  the  sug- 
gestions made,  the  one  most  worthy  of  credence  is,   perhaps,   that  of 
Lagarde  (Gr.  Uebers.  der  Prow.,  p.  81),  and  repeated  by  W.  R.  Smith 
(Religion  of  the  Semites,  2d  ed.,  p.  469),  viz.:    that  the  name  is  to  be 

connected  with  the  Arabic  -iL*^*/,  "quail,"  because  in  the  myth  lolaos 
brought  Heracles  to  life  by  giving  him  a  quail  to  smell  of. 

8  Cf.  W.  R.  Smith,  Religion  of  the  Semites,  2d  ed.,  pp.  374,  410,  and 
above,  p.  255  ff.  *  See  above,  p.  30.  *  Cf.  above,  p.  72,  n.  1. 


268 


Among  such  clans  the  worship  of  Tammuz  would  be  prac- 
tised, and  as  they  migrated  it  would  be  diffused.  Depend- 
ent as  these  clans  were  upon  the  oases  for  much  of  their 
nourishment,  they  would  long  perpetuate  the  myth  that 
their  god  was  the  son  of  the  goddess  of  the  oases.  The 
survival  of  Tammuz,  Dhu-'l-Shara,  Adon,  and  Eshmun 
was  most  natural.  The  widespread  cult  is  accounted  for 
by  primitive  Semitic  social  conditions,  and  in  turn  is  an 
important  link  in  the  chain  of  evidence  which  enables  us 
to  restore  the  outlines  of  that  far-off  social  and  religious 
organization. 


CHRONOLOGICAL  TABLE 


El-Amarna  tablets,  cir.  1400  B.C. 
Exodus  from  Egypt,  cir.  1260. 
Israel  invaded  Canaan,  cir.  1200. 
David  became  king,  cir.  1000. 
Kingdom  divided,  937. 
Ahab  king  of  Israel,  876-864. 
The  Prophet  Amos,  cir.  760. 
The  Prophet  Hosea,  cir.  745. 
The  Prophet  Isaiah,  740-700. 
Fall  of  Northern  Kingdom,  722. 
Manasseh  king  of  Judah,  696-641. 
Josiah  king  of  Judah,  639-608. 
Jeremiah  the  Prophet,  627-cir.  580. 
Josiah' s  reform,  621. 
The  Prophet  Ezekiel,  593-570. 
Destruction  of  Jerusalem,  586. 


The  second  Isaiah,  cir.  646. 

Cyrus  captured  Babylon  and  per- 
mitted return  of  Jews,  538. 

Second  Temple  completed,  516. 

Nehemiah,  governor  of  Jerusalem, 
444. 

Jews  pass  under  Greek  rule,  332. 

Jews  under  Egyptian  Ptolemies, 
323-198. 

Jews  pass  finally  under  Seleucids  of 
Antioch,  198. 

Earliest  parts  of  Enoch,  200-170. 

Maccabsean  revolt,  168-165. 

Jews  independent  under  Simon  and 
the  Asmonseans,  143-63. 

Judea  passes  under  Roman  sway,  63. 


CHAPTER  VII 

YAHWE 

IN  sketching  the  transformations  which  the  primitive 
Semitic  goddess  underwent1  as  the  Semites  wandered 
from  their  Arabian  home  into  other  environments,  no 
mention  was  made  of  Yahwe,  the  God  of  Israel.  This 
omission  was  not  accidental.  No  deity  of  the  old  Semitic 
world  compares  in  importance  with  Yahwe ;  the  worship- 
pers of  no  other  god  contributed  to  the  sum  of  humanity's 
ethical  ideas  and  spiritual  conceptions  a  tithe  of  the  value 
of  that  contributed  by  the  worshippers  of  Yahwe.  The 
importance  of  Yahwe,  therefore,  demands  that  a  separate 
chapter  should  be  devoted  to  him.  It  is  evident  to  one 
who  has  followed  with  any  sympathy  the  argument  of  the 
preceding  pages  that  the  religion  of  the  Semites  as  a  whole 
moved  forward  by  a  process  of  evolution  in  which  it  was 
subject  to  certain  great  principles  of  general  application. 
Is  the  religion  of  Israel  subject  in  any  degree  to  these 
great  principles  ?  Is  its  God  Yahwe  connected  at  all  with 
that  primitive  Semitic  root  from  which  we  have  found 
nearly  all  other  Semitic  gods  to  spring  ?  If  he  is,  can  it 
be  claimed  that  there  is  in  the  Old  Testament  any  special 
revelation  of  permanent  religious  value  ?  These  are  ques- 
tions which  we  must  now  try  to  answer,  and  it  is  the 
writer's  belief  that  to  each  one  of  these  an  affirmative 
reply  can  be  given. 

The  critical  study  of  the  Old  Testament,  which  has 
seemed  to  some  to  destroy  the  historical  and  religious 
value  of  the  earlier  bdoks  of  the  Bible  altogether,2  has 

1  Above,  Chapters  IV  and  V. 

2  The  reader  who  may  chance  to  be  unfamiliar  with  the  results  of 
criticism  will  find  compendious  statements  of  it  in  Driver's  Introduction 

269 


270  SEMITIC  ORIGINS 


really  opened  a  new  historical  vista  to  the  student  of  any 
phase  of  Israelitish  history.  This  is  as  true  of  Israel's 
religion  as  of  any  other  phase  of  her  life.  While  there 
are  critics  who  can  bring  themselves  to  regard  as  histori- 
cal scarcely  any  of  the  material  which  relates  to  the  times 
before  David  and  Solomon,  most  critics  regard  the  broad 
outline  of  the  traditions  which  relate  to  the  sojourn  in 
Egypt,  the  exodus,  the  wilderness  sojourn,  and  the  con- 
quest of  Canaan,  as  representing  real  facts  of  history. 
This  does  not  imply  that  there  is  no  need  to  apply  critical 
methods  to  these  traditions  in  order  to  ascertain  the  truth. 
Tradition  has  no  doubt  often  destroyed  the  historical  per- 
spective ;  it  has  applied  to  the  whole  of  the  nation  that 
which  in  reality  belonged  only  to  parts  of  it.  A  discrimi- 
nating student  can  nevertheless  still  in  good  degree  un- 
tangle the  thread  and  restore  the  main  features  of  the 
history.  In  this  task  much  help  is  secured  by  the  recog- 
nition of  the  simple  fact  that  in  the  genealogies  tribes  are 
often  personified  as  men. 

The  beginnings  of  the  nation  Israel  may,  by  the  aid  of 
critical  study,  be  broadly  sketched  as  follows : l  From 
time  immemorial  wave  upon  wave  of  Semites  had  over- 
run Palestine,  and  had  by  fusion  with  its  aboriginal 
inhabitants,  whatever  they  were,2  gradually  formed  the 

to  the  Literature  of  the  Old  Testament,  or  Cornill's  Einleitung  in  das 
alte  Testament.  The  best  presentation  of  the  criticism  of  the  Pentateuch 
and  Joshua  is  Carpenter  and  Harford-Battersby's  Hexateuch. 

1  This  sketch  gives  the  outline  which  my  own  studies  have  led  me  to 
adopt  as  most  probable.    For  sketches  of  other  scholars,  cf.  Kuenen, 
Eeligion  of  Israel,  pp.  109-115 ;  Stade,    Geschichte   des    Volkes  Israel, 
Vol.  I,  p.  113  ff.  ;    Wellhausen,  Israelitische   und  judische    Geschichte, 
ch.    ii;   Kent,  History   of  the   Hebrew  People,  Vol.  I,  ch.  v;   Cornill, 
History  of  the  People  of  Israel,  pp.  45-55 ;  Guthe,  Geschichte  des  Volkes 
Israel,  pp.    12-28,    and  §   9  of  his  article  "  Israel,"  in  Encyc.  Bib. ; 
Winckler,   Geschichte  Israels,  Vol.  I,  pp.  12-24;  and  §  1  of  Woods'* 
article,  "Israel,"  in  Hastings's  Dictionary  of  the  Bible. 

2  Sergi  (Mediterranean  JRace,  pp.  150-156)  believes  that  these  aborigi- 
nes were  Hittites  who  had  separated  from  the  North  African  race.     It 
must,  if  true,  have  been  at  a  considerably  earlier  time,  of  course,  than 
the  Semitic  migration  from  Africa. 


YAHWE  271 

Phoenician  or  Canaanitish  peoples.  It  has  been  already 
pointed  out1  that  from  the  time  of  Lugalzaggisi  (about 
4000  B.C.)  onward,  many  successive  expeditions  of  con- 
quest and  migration  from  Babylonia  had  also  swept  over 
the  land.  With  these  Babylonians  there  were  mingled, 
from  about  1500  B.C.  onward  (and  for  all  we  know,  from 
a  much  earlier  period),  Aramaean  tribes  who  had  pre- 
viously inhabited  the  highlands  between  the  Mesopotamian 
valley  and  the  Mediterranean.  The  presence  of  these 
tribes  can  be  traced  in  the  El-Amarna  letters  about 
1400  B.C.2  A  number  of  the  clans  which  were  afterward 
united  into  the  nation  Israel  belonged  to  this  Aramaic 
group  of  nomads.  This  is  proven  by  the  persistent  tradi- 
tions which  connected  Hebrew  ancestry  with  Aram,3  and 
receives  confirmation  from  phenomena  in  the  El-Amarna 
letters,  which  will  soon  be  noted. 

Of  these  clans,  the  Reubenites  may  have  been  at  first 
the  chief,4  but  that  leadership  soon  gave  way  to  the  power- 
ful Joseph  clan,  later  divided  into  the  clans  of  Ephraim 
and  Manasseh,  and  of  which  the  clan  of  Benjamin  was  a 
later  offshoot.5  Closely  allied  to  the  Reubenites  were  the 
clans  of  Issachar  and  Zebulon,  and  less  closely  the  clans 
of  Gad  and  Asher,  the  last  of  which  we  have  already 
traced  in  Palestine  in  the  El-Amarna  period.6 

1  See  above,  pp.  146  and  160. 

8  They  are  mentioned  in  the  annals  of  Tiglath-pileser  I,  about  1110  B.C. 
Cf.  KB.,  Vol.  I,  p.  33,  and  "  Aram,"  in  Encyc.  Bib.  and  Jewish  Encyclo- 
pedia, and  above,  p.  226  fi. 

«  Cf.  Gen.  12«,  24,  28!-322,  and  Deut.  26«. 

4  Cf.  the  tradition  that  he  was  Jacob's  firstborn,  Gen.  29s2,  49*,  etc. 
Birthright  implied  hegemony  and  power. 

6  Cf.  the  tradition  of  Benjamin's  late  birth,  Gen.  3516"18.  The  name 
Benjamin  is  really  Bne-Yamin,  "sons  of  the  south,"  i.e  "  southerners." 
The  kinship  to  the  Joseph  tribes  which  the  traditions  assign  means  that 
the  Benjaminites  were  the  "southerners"  of  the  Josephites.  Cf.  the 
Arabic  Yemenites.  A  more  remote  kinship  to  these  tribes  is  assigned  by 
the  traditions  to  the  tribes  of  Dan  and  Naphtali.  This  means  that  they 
joined  the  confederacy  later,  perhaps  after  the  emancipation  from  Egypt. 

*  The  tribes  of  Judah,  Simeon,  and  Levi  are  also  assigned  in  the  tradi- 
tions to  the  Leah  group.  On  Judah,  see  p.  272,  n.  4.  Simeon  as  a  clan 


272  SEMITIC  ORIGINS 


The  Joseph  clans1  wandered  in  time  of  famine  to 
Egypt,2  whither  they  were  followed  by  others,  probably 
some  of  the  Leah  tribes,  of  which  the  Reubenites  were  the 
most  powerful.  There,  in  course  of  time,  these  tribes 
found  themselves  in  bondage.  Meantime  the  Kenites,  a 
clan  whose  origin  was  more  directly  Arabian,  having  been 
touched  by  the  northern  wave  of  Minsean  influence  from 
south  Arabia,3  and  which  afterward  formed  part  of  the 
tribe  of  Judah,4  had  occupied  the  Sinaitic  peninsula  and 
the  region  to  the  north  of  it,  and  had  become  a  pastoral 
people.  Moses,  a  man  of  one  of  the  tribes  which  were  in 
bondage,  fled  from  Egypt,  sojourned  among  the  Kenites, 
became  a  devotee  of  the  Kenite  god,  Yahwe,  went  back  to 
Egypt,  proclaimed  Yahwe  the  deliverer  of  the  oppressed 
clans,  led  his  brethren  to  Sinai,  and  with  the  aid  of  Jethro, 
Yahwe's  priest  in  Midian,  bound  them  for  the  future  in 
alliance  with  the  Kenites  and  to  the  service  of  Yahwe.6 

has  in  the  historical  period  a  most  shadowy  and  problematical  existence. 
Possibly  it  was  an  early  clan  which  was  overtaken  by  misfortune  (Gen. 
49*  ff-).  The  same  «iay  be  said  of  the  tribe  of  Levi,  though  it  is  possible, 
as  Budde  thinks  (Eel.  of  Israel  to  the  Exile,  p.  80  ff.),  that  it  was  a 
priestly  clan  of  later  origin. 

1  Cf.  Wildeboer,  Jahvedienst  en  Volksreligie  in  Israel,  p.  15. 

2  Winckler,  Altorientalische   Forschungen,  p.  337  ff.,  has  suggested 
on  the  basis  of  a  Sabaean  inscription  that  Misraim  is  in  the  Old  Testa- 
ment a  later  misunderstanding  for  Misr,  a  name  which  he  believes  was 
applied  to  the  part  of  Arabia  which  included  the  Sinaitic  peninsula,  and 
that  the  Hebrews  never  were  in  Egypt  proper.    This  view  is  accepted  by 
Schmidt,  American  Journal  of  Theology,  Vol.  V,  p.  136.     This  is,  how- 
ever, too  slight  a  basis  on  which  to  cast  away  all  the  traditions  of  later  time. 

8  Cf.  Weber's  article,  "  Studien  zur  siidarabischen  Altertumskunde," 
and  the  literature  cited  in  it,  published  in  Mitthelungen  der  vorderasiat. 
GeselL,  1901,  especially  pp.  29  and  36  ff.  Cf.  also  Lidzbarski's  Ephem- 
eris  fur  semitische  Epigraphik,  Vol.  I,  p.  128. 

4  The  traditional  genealogies  indicate  that  there  was  a  close  kinship 
between  Judah  and  the  Reubenites.  This  means  that  there  was  an 
Aramaic  element  in  Judah,  to  which  other  elements,  as  pointed  out  below, 
were  joined  later.  The  possible  mention  of  Judah  in  the  El-Amarna 
tablets  (cf.  Jastrow,  JBL.,  Vol.  XII,  p.  61  ff.)  would,  if  real,  seem  to 
confirm  this  view. 

6  Cf.  Ex.  IS12*  and  Budde,  Bel.  of  Israel  to  the  Exile,  p.  22  ff. 


YAHWE  273 

After  wandering  for  a  time  as  nomads,  these  clans  or  a 
part  of  them  conquered  the  east-Jordanic  country,  in 
which  probably  some  of  their  kinsmen,  the  tribe  of  Gad, 
had  remained  from  earlier  times.  After  they  became  too 
numerous  for  this  region,  the  Jordan  was  crossed  and  the 
heart  of  Palestine  conquered.  After  their  settlement 
there,  tribes  which  had  never  left  the  country,  such  as 
Asher  and  perhaps  Dan  and  Naphtali,  were  incorporated 
with  them.  It  is  perhaps  true  that  an  Aramaic  element, 
kindred  to  the  Reubenites,  an  element  which  formed  the 
nucleus  of  the  tribe  of  Judah,  was  concerned  in  this  general 
movement  to  Egypt  and  back  ;  but  the  Kenite  clan,  at 
least  in  part,  and  perhaps  others  who  were  afterward  im- 
portant elements  of  the  tribe  of  Judah,  moved  from  the 
south  into  the  territory  later  occupied  .by  them  making 
their  entrance  at  a  time  considerably  subsequent  to  that 
of  the  Joseph  tribes.  Long  after  the  time  when  the  book 
of  Judges  takes  up  Israel's  history,  Jiidah  was  even  less 
closely  attached  to  the  oth,er  tribes  than  they  were  to  one 
another. 

These  Israelitish  clans  —  always  in  the  early- days  with- 
out fixed  organization  —  became  in  time,  by  absorbing 
elements  already  in  the  land,  the  tribes  of  the  book  of 
Judges.  Within  each  tribe  there  seems  to  have  been  no 
more  organization  than  Arabic  tribes  in  the  desert  show 
at  the  present  time,  and  as  regards  one  another  they  had  no 
real. governmental  connection.  A  sense  of  kinship  and  of 
loose  alliance  was  their  only  bond.  The  two  most  power- 
ful of  these  were  the  clans  of  Joseph  and  Judah.  These 
clans  were  never  permanently  united,  and  afterward 
formed  the  centres  of  the  northern  and  southern  king- 
doms. Some  of  the  features  of  this  sketch  will  be  en- 
larged upon  below  when  some  of  the  proof  for  it  will  be 
considered.  At  present  we  must  turn  to  one  or  two 
matters  which  are  thought  to  oppose  difficulties  to  the 
course  of  events  just  outlined. 

Among  the  El-Amarna  letters,  about  1400  B.C.,  there 


.274  SEMITIC  ORIGINS 


are  several  from  Abdikheba  of  Jerusalem1  in  which  he 
complains  that  his  government  is  being  overthrown  by  a 
people  called  Khabiri,  whom  Zimmern  and  Winckler2  have 
identified  with  the  Hebrews.  If  this  identification  were 
correct,  it  would  follow  that  the  exodus  should  be  dated 
considerably  earlier  than  has  of  late  been  customary  among 
scholars.  That  the  Khabiri  and  the  Hebrews  are  the 
same  is,  however,  very  improbable.3  The  suggestion  of 
Jastrow4  that  the  Khabiri  were  a  clan  afterward  embodied 
in  the  tribe  of  Asher  as  Heber  (Kheber)  seems  to  me  far 
more  probable.  If,  as  we  have  supposed,6  the  tribe  of 
Asher  was  fused  with  the  other  tribes  after  the  settlement 
in  Canaan,  the  presence  of  the  Khabiri  about  Jerusalem  at 
a  time  when  the  bulk  of  the  Hebrews  were  in  Egypt  would 
afford  no  difficulty. 

Another  fact  which  is  supposed  by  some  to  present  diffi- 
culty is  the  mention  of  Israel  on  a  stele  of  Meren-Ptah 
(Menephtah),  discovered  by  Petrie  in  1896.  The  context 
places  Israel  among  enemies  whom  the  king  destroyed  in 
Palestine.6  This  implies  that  Israel  was  settled  there  in 
the  reign  of  the  Pharaoh  under  whom  the  exodus  is 
usually  s»pposed  to  have  occurred.  The  force  of  this 
consideration  some  would  break  by  the  claim  that,  the 
poetical  and  exaggerated  language  of  the  inscription  of 
Menephtah  cannot  be  sufficiently  definite  to  be  taken 
seriously.  It  seems  clear,  however,  that  if  the  inscription 
has  any  meaning  at  all,  it  implies  that  Israel  was  in  Pales- 
tine when  it  was  written.  But  it  does  not  follow  that  the 
term  "  Israel  "  then  connoted  all  that  it  signified  at  a  later 
time.  Jacob  and  Joseph  in  the  reign  of  Thothmes  III,7  a 


KB.,  Vol.  V,  Nos.  179-185. 

2  See  his  Geschichte  Israels,  Vol.  I,  pp.  17-20. 

8  Cf.  Hommel's  Ancient  Hebrew  Tradition,  pp.  230  ff.  and  258  ff. 

*In  JBL.,  Vol.  XI,  p.  120.  5p.  273. 

«Cf.  Steindorf  in  ZATW.,  Vol.  XVI,  p.  330  ff.;  and  Breasted  in 
Biblical  World,  Vol.  IX,  p.  62  ff.  For  a  summary  of  conflicting  opinions 
cf.  ibid.,  Vol.  VIII,  p.  243  ff. 

7  W.  Max  Miiller,  Asien  und  Europa,  p.  163. 


YAH  WE  27.5 

little  earlier,  were  the  names  of  places,  and  Joseph  at 
least  underwent  a  change  ;  may  not  Israel  have  done  the 
same  ?  The  inscription  makes  it  clear  that  Israel  is  used 
in  the  sense  of  a  people ;  but  if  our  view  of  the  gradual 
aggregation  of  the  Israel  of  later  times  be  correct,  not  all 
the  clans  which  we  know  under  that  designation  in  the 
Old  Testament  need  have  been  present  among  those  whom 
Menephtah  vanquished.  If  a  small  detachment  were  there, 
the  conditions  would  be  satisfied.1  This  difficulty  there- 
fore vanishes.2 

On  the  view  of  the  origin  of  the  Israelites  outlined 
above,  Yahwe  was  the  god  of  the  Kenites  before  he  became 
the  God  of  Israel.  This  view  was  first  suggested  by 
Ghillany,8  and  afterward  independently  by  Tiele,*  more 
fully  urged  by  Stade,5  and  has  been  thoroughly  worked 
out  by  Budde.6  It  is  now  accepted  by  others,  as  Guthe,7 
Wildeboer,8  and  H.  P.  Smith.9  It  is  naturally  rejected 
by  Dillmann,10  and  his  school,11  as  well  as  by  writers  like 
Robertson,12  who  contend  against  all  critical  theories  of 
the  origin  of  Israel's  religion.  The  reasons  for  accepting 
the  view  that  Yahwe  was  the  god  of  the  Kenites  before 
Moses  mediated  a  covenant  whereby  he  became  the  god  of 

i  Cf.  Budde,  Eel,  of  Israel,  p.  7. 

8  The  indefiniteness  of  Menephtah's  use  of  the  word  "  Israel "  is  shown 
by  the  contradictory  theories  built  upon  it ;  cf.  Biblical  World,  Vol. 
VIII,  p.  243  ff. 

•In  1862,  writing  under  the  pseudonym  of  Richard  von  der  Aim. 
Cf.  Holzinger  in  Exodus  in  Marti's  Kurzer  Hand-Corn.,  p.  13. 

*  Manuel  de  Vhistoire  des  religions,  1880,  p.  84 ;  Histoire  comparee 
des  anciennes  religions,  1882,  ch.  ix ;  and  Outline  of  the  History  of 
Ancient  Religions,  1888,  p.  85. 

5  Geschichte  des  Volkes  Israel,  Vol.  I,  p.  130  ff. 

6  New  World,  1895,  pp.  726-746  ;  and  Religion  of  Israel  to  the  Exile. 

7  Gfsc.hichte  des  Volkes  Israel,  p.  21. 

8  Jahvedienst  en  Volksreligie  in  Israel,  p.  15  ff. 

9  American  Journal  of  Theology,  Vol.  IV,  p.  549  ff. 

10  Com.  on  Exodus  (ch.  31*)  ;  and  Alttestamentliche  Theologie,  p.  103,  n. 

11  Cf.  e.g.  Kittel,  History  of  Israel,  Vol.  I,  p.  250  ;  and  Strack,  Com.  on 
Exodus  (ch.  3"). 

12  See  his  Early  Religion  of  Israel. 


276  SEMITIC  ORIGINS 


the  Joseph  tribes  and  ultimately  of  Israel  are,  in  brief,  as 
follows  :  — 

1.  Of  the  three  documents,  J,  E,  and  P,  which  narrate 
the  exodus,  two,  E  and  P,  relate  that  the  name  Yahwe 
was  quite  unknown  until  the  time  of  Moses,1  and  that  it 
was  revealed  to  him  while  tending  the  flock  at  Yahwe'o 
mount  of  Horeb  or  Sinai.     Moses  was  told  that  he  was 
treading  on  holy  ground,  i.e.  that  the  mountain  where  he 
was  was  the  sacred  dwelling  of  Yahwe.     P  declares  that 
the  patriarchs  had  worshipped  Yahwe  under  the  name 
El-Shaddai,  but  that  he  was  unknown  to  them  by  his 
name  Yahwe.     It  was  thus  by  the  late  date  at  which  P 
wrote  that  the  identity  of  two  gods  could  be  asserted,  but 
in  the  earlier  time  of  Moses  such  was  not  the  case.     A 
different  name  soon  came  to  mean  a  different  deity,  even 
when  it  had  been  at  first  a  mere  epithet  of  a  god  already 
well  known.     E,  on  the  other  hand,  declares2  that  up  to 
the  time  of  the  exodus  the  ancestors  of  Israel  had  been 
idolaters.     True,  he  seems  to  make  an  exception  in  the 
case  of  Abraham,  Isaac,  and  Jacob,3  but  the  exception  is 
more  in  seeming  than  in  reality.     E,  as  critics  agree,4  was 
an  Ephraimite.     In  him  the  traditions  as  they  were  current 
among  the  Joseph  tribes  find  expression  ;  and  those  tradi- 
tions  had   preserved   the   definite    recollection   that  the 
knowledge  of  Yahwe  was  not  original  in  Israel,  but  came 
in  at  the  time  of  Moses.     P  was  dependent  for  his  knowl- 
edge of  the  subject  upon  E,  and  simply  retold  the  story  in 
his  own  way. 

2.  That  Yahwe  was  the  god  of  the  Kenites  is  further 
shown  by  the  nature  of  the  sacrificial  covenant  which, 
according  to  E,5  preceded  the  giving  of  the  law.     At  that 
sacrifice  to  Yahwe  it  was  not  Moses  or  Aaron  who  offi- 
ciated as  though  initiating  Jethro  into  a  new  worship,  but 

i  E,  in  Ex.  S13* •;  P,  in  Ex.  &«.  2  Josh.  24".  »Ex.  3«. 

*Cf.  Kuenen,  Hexateuch,  p.  248  ff. ;  Driver,   Introduction,  p.  115  ff.; 
and  Carpenter  and  Harford-Battersby's  Hexateuch,  Vol.  I,  p.  116. 
8  Ex.  IS12*.     Cf.  Budde,  Religion  of  Israel,  p.  22. 


YAH  WE  277 

Jethro,  the  Kenite,1  officiated  as  though  introducing  Moses 
into  a  new  cult. 

3.  For  centuries  after  Moses  Sinai  was  regarded  as  the 
home  of  Yahwe,  even  when  it  lay  beyond  Israel's  borders. 
From  Sinai  Yahwe  came  to  give  victory  to  his  people  in 
the  days  of  Deborah  ; 2  to  Sinai  Elijah  made  a  pilgrimage 
in  order  to  seek  Yahwe  in  his  home  ; 3  and  the  prophetic 
writer  who  shaped  the  blessing  of  Moses  echoed  the  same 
conception.4    So  deeply  was  the  idea  fixed  in  the  religious 
thought  that  it  survived  in  poetry  in  post-exilic  times  after 
the  sanctity  of  the  temple  at  Jerusalem  had  caused  that 
structure  to  supplant  Sinai  in  the  popular  thought  as  the 
abode  of  Yahwe.6 

4.  The  Kenites  were  during  several  succeeding  centu- 
ries the  champions  of  the  pure  worship  of  Yahwe,  even 
among  the  Hebrews  themselves.     Thus  Jael,  the  wife  of 
Heber,  the  Kenite,  was  the  slaughterer  of  Sisera  and  the 
champion  of  Yahwe  ; 6  Jonadab,  the  son  of  Rechab,  who 
was  a  Kenite,7  and  who  maintained  the  nomadic  ideals  of 
the  worship  of  Yahwe  as  they  had  existed  in  the  steppe, 
aided  Jehu  in  the  eradication  of  Baal-worship  in  Israel,  and 
in  the  establishment  of  the  worship  of  Yah  we;8  and  centu- 
ries later  the  fidelity  of  these  Kenitic  Rechabites  to  Yahwe 
was  such  that  it  served  admirably  in  Uhe  hands  of  Jere- 
miah to  point  a  moral  to  his  degenerate  fellow-citizens.9 

5.  These  Kenites  (sometimes  called  Midianites 10)  seem, 
a  part  of  them,  to  have  joined  Israel  in  their  migrations,11 
becoming  mingled  with  the  people  at  various  points,  both 
in  the  North  w  and  the  South,13  and  in  part  they  remained  in 
their  old  habitat  on  the  southern  borders  of  Judah  as  a 
separate  though  friendly  clan  in  the  days  of  Saul ; 14  finally, 

i  Cf.  Jud.  1"  and  4".        *  Deut.  33».  »  Cf.  1  Chr.  2s6. 

a  Jud.  5*  *.  6  Cf .  Hab.  3*  and  Ps.  685  W.     •  2  Kgs.  1016. 

•  1  Kgs.  19.  «  Jud.  5"  ff  and  4"*.  •  Jer.  35. 

10  The  Kenites  seem  to  have  been  a  part  of  the  Midianites.    The  latter 
was  the  broader  term.    Cf.  Budde,  Bel.  of  Israel,  p.  19. 

"Num.  10»«.        u  Jud.  4"  *  ;  5*  ft.         »  Jud.  1".        "  1  Sam.  IP. 


278  SEMITIC  ORIGINS 


in  the  days  of  David,  they  were  incorporated  into  the  tribe 
of  Judah,1  with  which  they  were  afterward  counted.2 

6.  Now  it  was  in  the  tribe  of  Judah,  into  which  these 
Kenites  had  been  incorporated,  that,  as  most  recent  critics 
believe,3  the  J  document  was  composed,  —  that  document 
which  betrays  no  consciousness  that  there  had  ever  been  a 
time  in  Israel  when  the  worship  of  Yahwe  was  unknown, 
and  which  makes  that  worship  almost  coeval  with  man.4 
This  fact  is  all  the  more  striking  when  it  is  remembered 
that  J  had  accepted  so  many  of  the  Aramaic  traditions5 
which  were  in  all  probability  originally  the  possessions  of 
the  tribes  farther  to  the  north ;  and  it  is  best  accounted 
for  by  the  supposition  that  the  Kenites,  whose  god  Yahwe 
originally  was,  had  been  fused  with  the  tribe  of  Judah 
and  had  thus  infused  into  Judsean  tradition  a  strong  semi- 
Arabian  current  of  thought,  on  which  was  borne  the  con- 
sciousness of  the  immemorial  knowledge  of  Yahwe.  The 
perpetual  separateness  of  Judah  from  the  other  tribes 
would  help  to  maintain  this  tradition  in  spite  of  antago- 
nistic currents  from  other  quarters. 

We  conclude,  therefore,  that  the  result  of  the  application 
of  critical  methods  to  the  history  of  Israel  is  to  make  it 
clear  that  Yahwe  was  the  god  of  the  Kenites  before  the 
days  of  Moses. 

Can  we  now  go  farther  and  determine  anything  of  the 
nature  of  Yahwe  or  of  his  history  before  he  became  the  God 
of  Israel  ?  Our  investigation  has,  I  think,  placed  us  in  a 
position  to  do  this.  But  before  proceeding  to  the  task 
we  must  first  notice  a  view  which  has  sometimes  been  ad- 

*1  Sam.  3026ff-.e«P-29. 

2  Cf.  the  genealogy  of  the  Calebites  and  Bethlehemites  in  1  Chr.  2, 
ending  with  v.  55,  according  to  which  David  himself  came  from  a  family 
of  Kenites.  For  a  comprehensive  statement  of  the  Biblical  data  concern- 
ing the  Kenites  see  Kuenen's  Religion  of  Israel,  pp.  179-182.  The  state- 
ment is  condensed  from  an  earlier  article  of  Nb'ldeke. 

8  See  discussions  in  Driver's  Introduction,  p.  115  ff.,  and  Carpenter  and 
Harford-Battersby's  Hexateuch,  Vol.  I,  pp.  104-106. 

*  Gen  426.  6  Cf.  Gen.  24  and  the  J  element  in  Gen.  28-31. 


YAHWE  279 

vocated,1  and  which  I  formerly  held,2  that  Yahwe  in  his 
primitive  character  was  a  storm  god.  In  favor  of  this  the- 
ory it  may  be  urged  that  in  the  theophanies  he  is  usually 
represented  as  coming  in  a  thunder-storm  ;3  that  he  is  said 
to  have  led  his  people  in  a  cloud  ; 4  that  he  appeared  on 
Mount  Sinai  and  in  the  temple  as  a  cloud  ; 6  that  in  the 
middle  books  of  the  Pentateuch  the  cloud  is  used  as  a 
token  of  Yahwe's  presence  more  than  forty  times  ;  that 
the  thunder  was  the  "  voice  of  Yahwe  "  ; 6  and  that  Yahwe 
controlled  the  stormy  movements  of  nature.7  These  facts, 
which  are  beyond  dispute,  have  led  Winckler  to  regard 
Yahwe  as  a  Hadad  or  a  Ramman.8 

There  can  be  no  doubt  but  that  in  the  case  of  Yahwe,  as 
in  that  of  Hadad  and  Ramman,  the  god  was  conceived  as 
controlling  the  phenomena  of  the  weather  and  of  the 
heavens,  and  of  manifesting  himself  through  them.  Such 
conceptions  may  well  have  been  entertained  by  residents 
in  the  Sinaitic  region  as  well  as  by  the  Aramaeans,  resi- 
dent in  the  various  parts  of  Syria,  and  by  the  ancient  As- 
syrians and  Babylonians.  Robertson  Smith  has,  however, 
wisely  warned  us  against  finding  the  origin  of  any  Semitic 
god  in  the  personification  of  any  one  power  of  nature ; 9 
the  primitive  Semite  looked  to  his  god  to  perform  for  him 
the  whole  circle  of  divine  activities,  and  the  theory  that 
Yahwe  was  primarily  the  personification  of  the  storm  is  as 
inadequate  as  the  theory  that  Hadad  or  Ramman  was.10 
Indeed,  we  are  now  in  a  position  to  show  that  in  all  prob- 
ability the  Yahwe  of  the  Kenites  was  developed  like 

1  Cf.  Stade,  Geschichte  des  Volkes  Israel,  Vol.  I,  p.  429  ff. 

2  Cf .  Oriental  Studies  of  the  Oriental  Club  of  Philadelphia,  p.  86  ff. 
»  Cf.  Ps.  18,  Ez.  1,  Hab.  3,  Isa.  191,  and  Job  381. 

*  Ex.  13  and  14. 

*Ei.  19  and  1  Kgs.  8*°  ". 

•  Ps.  29' «f,  Job  37*,  and  Ps.  68». 

7  Ps.  10418- 14,  and  Ps.  1478- 16-18. 

8  Geschichte  Israels,  Vol.  I,  p.  37  ff. 

9  Religion  of  the  Semites,  2d  ed.,  p.  81  ff.     Cf.  Budde,  Eel.  of  Israel, 
p.  57,  n. 

10  See  above,  p.  227  ff. 


280  SEMITIC  ORIGINS 


Ramman,  Hadad,  and  most  other  Semitic  deities,  by  the 
same  processes  which  we  have  traced  elsewhere,  out  of  the 
primitive  mother  goddess.  The  reasons  for  this  view  are 
as  follows :  — 

1.  The  Kenites  were  a  Semitic  tribe  resident  upon  the 
confines  of  Arabia  itself,  and  it  is  to  be  presumed  that 
their  religious  life  had  been  continuous  and  subject  to  the 
ordinary  laws  of  Semitic  development.  2.  They  were  a 
pastoral  people,1  who,  according  to  the  general  laws  of  clan 
organization  as  outlined  by  Professor  Keasbey,2  must  have 
developed  the  patriarchal  clan.  Like  the  Moabites,3  their 
neighbors,  then,  the  primitive  goddess  which  was  their 
common  Semitic  inheritance  had  among  them  been  trans- 
formed into  a  corresponding  masculine  deity.  3.  That 
Yahwe  had  some  genetic  connection  with  the  primitive 
goddess  is  shown  by  the  emphasis  which  his  cult  laid  upon 
circumcision.  We  are  told  by  J4  that  Yahwe  sought  to 
kill  Moses  till  his  son  was  circumcised,  when  the  god  be- 
came friendly.6  The  same  writer  tells  us  that  after  their 
entrance  into  Canaan  6  the  marriageable  young  men  were 
circumcised  to  complete  their  consecration  to  Yahwe. 
The  Priestly  writer  represents  circumcision  as  instituted 
in  the  time  of  Abraham  as  a  token  of  Yahwe's  covenant 
with  him,7  and  informs  us  that  no  uncircumcised  person 
could  keep  Yahwe's  passover.8  Such  was  the  stress  laid 
upon  circumcision  that  in  later  times  it  became  a  synonym 
for  Israelite,  and  uncircumcised  a  synonym  for  foreigner.9 
Circumcision  became  also  a  synonym  for  all  the  spiritual 
and  ethical  qualities  for  which  the  Yahwe  cult  had  then 

i  Ex.  2»«  «f-  31 ff-.       2  Above,  p.  30.       8  Above,  p.  140  ff.       «  Ex.  4  24.  v>. 

6  The  real  meaning  of  the  passage  seems  to  be  that  Moses  himself  was 
uncircumcised,  and  that,  therefore,  Yahwe  tried  to  kill  him  ;  that  Moses's 
wife  circumcised  her  son  and  smeared  the  blood  upon  Moses,  so  as  to 
make  it  appear  that  the  blood  proceeded  from  an  incision  in  him,  and 
that  then  Yahwe  was  appeased.  Cf.  Wellhausen,  Heidentum,  2d  ed., 
p.  175. 

6  Josh.  53  ».  i  Gen.  17.  8  Ex.  12*8. 

9  Cf.  1  Sam.  31*,  2  Sam.  1»,  1  Chr.  10*,  and  Rom.  3*>. 


YAHWE  281 

come  to  stand.1  Abraham,  it  was  thought,  would  save 
from  the  pit  all  who  bore  the  mark  of  circumcision.2  How 
deeply  fixed  this  rite  became  is  indicated  by  the  struggle 
which  Paul  and  others  had  to  undergo  in  order  to  throw 
it  off.  The  fixed  and  important  character  which  it  had  at 
all  periods  indicates  that  from  the  very  beginning  it  must 
have  been  considered  a  vital  part  of  the  religion  of  Yahwe, 
and  must  have  had  its  motive  in  a  conception  which  iden- 
tified the  rite  with  some  of  Yahwe's  most  important  func- 
tions. Now,  at  the  first,  circumcision  seems  to  have  been 
in  Israel  itself  a  preparation  for  connubium.3  The  same 
rite  with  the  same  meaning  we  have  previously  found  to 
be  a  part  of  the  cult  of  the  primitive  mother  goddess.4 
The  existence  of  circumcision  in  the  cult  of  Yahwe  is 
therefore  a  strong  argument  for  the  theory  that  the  cult 
of  Yahwe  was  a  direct  development  from  that  primitive 
Semitic  worship. 

4.  Another  indication  that  Yahwe  was  originally  devel- 
oped out  of  the  mother  goddess  is  the  old  Hebrew  custom 
of  swearing  by  Yahwe  with  the  hand  "under  the  thigh," 
i.e.  upon  the  organs  of  reproduction.6  This  custom  shows 
that  in  early  times  this  part  of  the  body  must  have  been 
especially  sacred  to  Yahwe.  That  would  naturally  be  the 
case  if  he  were  developed  from  an  Ashtart.  5.  All  critics 
agree  that  the  passover  was  the  feast  of  Yahwe  which 
without  question  antedates  the  settlement  in  Canaan.6 
This  festival,  with  its  sacrifice  of  a  sheep,  we  have  already 
traced7  in  its  beginnings  to  the  feast  of  the  primitive 


'Cf.  Rom. 

a  Cf  .  Weber's  Judische  Theologie,  2d  ed.,  pp.  342,  343. 
8Cf.  Gen.  34  and  Ex.  4as.     In  the  latter  passage  the  phrase  "bride- 
groom of  blood"  connects  it  with  connubium. 

*  See  above,  pp.  98  ff.  and  110  ff. 

*  Cf  .  Gen.  242-  9,  and  47». 

6  Cf.  e.g.  Wellhausen,  Prolegomena,  5th  ed.,  ch.  iii  ;  W.  R.  Smith,  Eel. 
of  Sem.,  2d  ed.,  227  ff.,  445  ff.;  Piepenbring,  Theology  of  the  Old  Testa- 
ment, p.  50  ;  Budde,  Bel.  of  Israel,  p.  73  ff.,  and  Moulton's  article  "Pass- 
over" in  Hastings'R  Dirt,  of  the  Bible. 

'  Above,  p.  109  ff. 


282  SEMITIC   ORIGINS 


Semitic  goddess.  If,  therefore,  it  was  a  festival  of  Yahwe 
in  the  steppe,  it  is  another  link  connecting  him  with  that 
primitive  cult.  This  inference  receives  confirmation  from 
another  quarter.  Three  times  in  the  book  of  Deuteronomy 
are  lambs  —  the  characteristic  offerings  of  the  passover  — 
called  the  "'ashtaroth  of  the  flock,"1  a  phrase  which  prob- 
ably had  survived  from  primitive  usage,  when  the  connec- 
tion of  the  offering  with  a  deity  bearing  this  name  had 
been  obscured  by  the  introduction  of  no  other  epithet. 
Further  confirmation  of  this  view  may  be  found  in  the  fact 
of  the  sanctity  of  the  threshold  which  is  prominently 
recognized  in  the  ritual  of  the  passover.2  Trumbull3 
traces  this  sanctity  back  to  a  recognition  of  the  relation 
of  the  sexes  to  one  another,  and,  although  my  own  studies 
would  lead  me  to  think  that  the  direct  application  which 
he  makes  of  it  to  the  passover  leaves  out  of  account  some 
other  important  elements,  yet  his  explanation  of  the  fact 
harmonizes  with  the  general  explanation  of  this  cult  which 
we  have  reached.  All  these  phenomena  connected  with 
the  passover,  therefore,  confirm  the  view  that  that  festival, 
even  in  the  worship  of  Yahwe,  goes  back  to  a  primitive 
Semitic  root. 

6.  The  origin  of  Yahwe  for  which  we  contend  is  con- 
firmed by  the  most  probable  etymology  of  his  name  —  that 
proposed  long  ago  by  Le  Clerc  *  and  accepted  by  many 
modern  scholars  —  viz. :  that  the  name  Yahwe  is  a  Hiphil 
form  meaning,  "He  who  causes  to  be,"  Le.  "gives  life."6 

iDeut.  7",  28<-is. 

3  The  name  np?  probably  has  nothing  to  do  with  leaping  over  the 
threshold,  but  seems  to  mean  a  "dance."  Cf.  Toy,  in  JBL.,  Vol.  XVI, 
p.  178  ff.,  and  Buhl,  Gesenius*  Handworterbuch,  13th  ed. 

8  The  Threshold  Covenant,  ch.  v. 

*  In  his  Commentary,  on  Ex.  68,  published  in  1696.  Cf.  Driver  in  the 
Oxford  Studio,  Biblia,  Vol.  I,  p.  13.  Le  Clerc  made  a  somewhat  different 
application  of  it  from  that  advocated  here. 

6  The  name  occurs  in  the  Old  Testament  in  four  forms,  Yahwe,  Yah, 
Y6,  and  Yeh6.  The  second  form  occurs  in  proper  names  and  in  late 
poetry,  and  the  third  and  fourth  in  proper  names  (cf.  Gray,  He- 
brew Proper  Names,  p.  149  ff.,  and  Bonk,  ZATW.,  Vol.  XI,  p.  125  ff.). 


YAH  WE  283 

The  explanation  given  in  Exodus  314fl-  no  doubt  repre- 
sents the  understanding  of  the  name  prevalent  in  Israel 

The  prevailing  opinion  among  scholars  is  that  the  shorter  forms  are  de- 
rived from  the  longer  form,  Yahwe.  Friedrich  Delitzsch,  however,  Wo 
Lag  das  Parodies,  pp.  158-164,  held  that  the  shorter  forms  were  the  ear- 
lier, that  they  were  derived  from  the  name  of  the  Babylonian  god  Ea  or 
Ya,  and  that  the  longer  form  was  developed  from  this  by  the  Hebrews,  a 
view  which  has  not  met  with  general  acceptance  (cf.  Driver  in  Studio, 
Biblia,  Vol.  I,  pp.  4-6,  and  10  ff.),  although  Hommel  holds  it  (Anc.  Heb. 
Trad.,  p.  114).  Margoliouth  has  more  recently  revived  it  in  a  crude 
form  which  has,  so  far  as  I  know,  convinced  no  one  (cf.  Contemporary 
Review,  October,  1898,  p.  581  ff.).  The  Babylonian  origin  is  not  made  out 
(cf.  Sayce,  Higher  Criticism  and  the  Verdict  of  the  Monuments,  p.  87  ff., 
and  Early  History  of  the  Hebrews,  p.  164  ff.),  and  it  is  hardly  possible 
philologically  to  derive  a  long  form  like  Yahwe  from  a  short  form  like 
Yah.  Words  everywhere  wear  down,  but  are  not  lengthened.  More 
recently  Spiegelberg  (ZDMG.,  Vol.  LIII,  p.  633  ff.)  has  proposed  an 
Egyptian  origin  for  the  name  Yahwe.  It  can,  however,  hardly  be  sup- 
posed that  a  people  whose  religious  ideas  hardly  influenced  those  of 
Israel  at  all  furnished  them  the  name  of  their  God. 

Most  scholars  have  sought  a  meaning  for  it  in  Hebrew  and  have  ex- 
plained it  as  follows  :  — 

1.  As  a  Qal  of  mn  an  old  form  equivalent  to  .T,~t  in  the  sense  of  "  He 
who  is,"  i.e.  "the  self -existent "  or  "unchangeable  one,"  following  Ex. 
314 ;  so  Dillmaun,  Com.  ub.  Ex.,  in  loc.,  Franz  Delitzsch  Com.  ub.  Gen. 
(1872)  p.  26,  60,  and  Oehler  (Theol.  of  0.  T.,  §  39).    This  form  is,  as 
has  been  remarked  in  the  text,  too  abstract  to  be  primitive. 

2.  As  a  Qal  in  the  sense  of  "He  will  be,"  also  based  on  Ex.  314,  and 
Hos.  29.     This  theory  of  the  name  has  given  rise  to  several  different  inter- 
pretations :  Robertson  Smith  (British  and  Foreign  Evangelical  Review, 
1876)  explained  it  as  "  He  will  be  it,"  i.e.  all  that  his  servants  look  for ; 
Driver  (Studia  Biblia,  Vol.  I,  p.  17),  Hommel  (Anc.  Heb.  Trad.,  p.  114), 
Marti,    Theologie  (3d  ed.,  p.  61,  n.  20):    "He  will  approve  himself," 
i.e.  give  evidence  of  his  being,  or  assert  his  being,  will  reveal  him- 
self, or  enact  history  ;  Skipwith  :  "  He  will  be  with  us,"  i.e.  in  battle  (in 
Jewish  Quarterly  Review,  July,  1898).     Of  the  applications  of  this  expla- 
nation, the  first  and  second  are  too  abstract  to  be  primitive.    The  third 
would  do  very  well  if  we  could  be  sure  that  the  god  who  first  bore  the 
name  was  conceived  chiefly  as  a  god  of  war.     Such  a  supposition  is  pre- 
carious, for  as  we  have  seen  the  early  Semite  looked  to  his  god  to  do 
whatever  he  needed,  and  the  war  function  was  only  one  of  many. 

3.  As  a  Hiphil  from  mn  (cf.  Arab  ^ye  and  Job  38s)  in  the  sense  of 
"  cause  to  fall,"  i.e.  to  send  down.    This  explanation  has  received  various 
applications,  as  follows :  Robertson  Smith  ( Old  Test,  in  Jewish  Church, 
1st  ed.,  p.  423)  and  Barton  (Oriental  Studies  of  Or.  C.  of  Phila.,  p.  87)  : 


284  SEMITIC  ORIGINS 


in  the  prophetic  period,  but,  as  many  scholars  have  felt, 
it  is  too  abstract  to  be  primitive.  Smend  and  Piepen- 

"  He  who  sends  down  rain  "  ;  Wellhausen  (Heidentum,  1st  ed.,  p.  175)  and 
Stade  (Geschichte,  Vol.  I,  p.  429):  "He  who  causes  enemies  to  fall"  ; 
Margoliouth  (PtiBA.,  Vol.  XVII,  p.  57  ff.):  "  He  who  sends  down  law"  ; 
and  Holzinger  (Ein.  in  das  Hexateuch,  p.  204,  and  Com.  ub.  Exodus,  p. 
13):  "He  who  causes  to  fall,"  i.e.  the  destroying  demon  or  destroyer. 
For  reasons  already  explained  this  etymology  now  seems  unsatisfactory. 

4.  The  etymology  suggested  by  Le  Clerc  has  been  adopted  by  several 
modern  scholars,  taking  the  name  as  a  Hiphil  of  !Tn=!Tn.  Not  all,  how- 
ever, take  it  iii  the  same  sense.  Gesenius  (Thesaurus,  1839,  p.  577,  n.), 
Baudessin  (Studien,  Vol.  I,  p.  229),  Schrader  (in  Schenkel's  Bibel-Lexi- 
con),  and  Schultz  (  Theologie,  2d  ed. ,  p.  487  ff.)  take  it  in  the  sense  of  "  He 
who  causes  being"  or  "  life  " ;  Kuenen  (Religion  of  Israel,  pp.  279,  398), 
"He  who  gives  existence";  and  Lagarde  (ZDMG.,  Vol.  XXII,  p.  331, 
Symmicta,  Vol.  I,  p.  104,  Psalterium  juxta  Hebrceos  Hieronymi,  p.  153 
ff.,  Orientalia,  Vol.  II,  pp.  27-30,  and  Gott.  Gel.  Anzeigen,  1885,  p.  91) 
and  Nestle  (Isr.  Eigennamen,  p.  88  ff.)  take  it  as  "He  who  brings  to 
pass,"  i.e.  the  performer  of  his  promises.  Of  these  the  general  nature  of 
Yahwe,  which  a  broad  view  of  Semitic  development  leads  us  to  take, 
makes  "  He  who  gives  life  "  the  most  probable  original  meaning. 

There  are  some  traces  of  the  name  Yahwe  among  non-Israelites  which 
are  interesting.  Among  these  I  do  not  count  names  ending  in  Ya,  for  as 
Jastrow  has  shown  (JBL.,  Vol.  XIII,  p.  101  ff.),  such  names  do  not  nec- 
essarily contain  a  divine  element.  This  applies  even  to  Bit-ya,  which  W. 
Max  Miiller  (Asien  und  Europa,  p.  312  ff.)  finds  in  a  list  of  Thothmes 
III.  Ya-u-bi-'i-di,  a  king  of  Hamath  in  the  days  of  Sargon  (see  Schrader, 
JKAT.2,  p.  23,  and  KB.,  Vol.  II,  p.  57),  in  whose  name  Yahu  appears 
as  a  divine  element,  is  very  interesting.  It  suggests  the  possibility 
that  the  Kenites  who  in  earlier  days  settled  in  the  north  had  extended 
their  influence  to  Hamath,  so  that  the  epithet  by  which  they  called  their 
god  had  been  applied  by  the  Hamathites  to  their  Hadad.  It  is  possible, 
of  course,  that  the  Aramaeans  developed  the  name  independently.  Bau- 
dessin has  shown  (Studien,  Vol.  I,  p.  180  ff.)  how  the  name  Yahwe 
passed  to  Greek  writers  from  the  Jews  as  'law.  Macrobius  (Saturnalia, 
I,  18,  19  ff.),  connects  the  name  'I<£w  with  the  Clarian  Apollo.  There  is 
also  considerable  evidence  which  was  collected  by  Movers  (see  Phcenizier, 
Vol.  I,  pp.  642-547),  which  connects  'Idw  with  the  Phoenician  'ASwrn. 
Lenormant  thought  (Lettres  assyriologique,  1st  ser.,  Vol.  II,  pp.  196- 
201),  that  the  Phoenicians  also  had  the  name  as  applied  to  this  god  in  the 
sense  of  the  "  self-existent  one."  Driver  (Studia  Biblia,  Vol.  I,  p.  3) 
claims  with  considerable  force  that  the  name,  if  derived  from  rrn  can 
hardly  have  been  of  general  Canaanitish  usage,  because  in  Phoenician  as 
in  Arabic  and  Ethiopic  the  substantive  verb  in  J13.  It  is  possible  that 
they  used  ,"!in  also  as  well  as  their  Hebrew  and  Aramaic  neighbors,  only 


YAHWE  285 

bring's J  objection  that  Israel  did  not  in  the  Old  Testa- 
ment period  look  upon  Yahwe  as  especially  the  creator  is 
wide  of  the  mark,  if  Yahwe  was  his  name  first  among  the 
Kenites.  To  find  its  meaning  we  must  look  at  the  reli- 
gious conceptions  of  the  Kenites,  and  not  those  of  later 
Israel.  The  Kenites  were  without  doubt  in  their  general 
religious  conceptions  practically  on  a  level  with  their 
Semitic  neighbors  of  the  period,  and  among  such  peoples 
nothing  would  be  more  natural,  as  the  preceding  pages 
have  shown,  than  to  call  one  of  their  gods  of  fertility  the 
giver  of  life. 

Indeed,  there  is  some  evidence  to  show  that  the  name 
was  actually  employed  far  beyond  the  bounds  of  the  Ken- 
ites, and  that  it  has  entered  as  an  element  into  at  least 
one  Aramaic  proper  name.2  Yahwe  seems,  therefore,  to 
have  been  an  epithet  applied  by  more  than  one  family  of 
western  Semites  to  gods  of  the  Semitic  life-giving  type. 

7.  Another  fact  which  indicates  the  connection  of 
Yahwe  with  the  primitive  Semitic  cult  is  the  connection 
of  the  Kenites  with  palm  trees.  The  city  of  Jericho  was 
at  one  time  one  of  their  seats,3  and  Jericho  was  a  city  of 
palm  trees.*  Elim,  which  was  apparently  a  sacred  oasis 
in  the  neighborhood  of  Sinai,  contained  its  twelve  sacred 
wells  and  its  seventy  palm  trees.5  About  Sinai  itself,  in 
ancient  as  in  modern 6  times,  the  culture  of  the  palm  tree 

the  word  has  not  chanced  to  survive  in  any  extant  inscriptions.  At  all 
events,  the  view  which  we  are  led  to  take  of  the  meaning  of  Yahwe  makes 
it  a  tempting  hypothesis  to  suppose  that  either  as  a  native  Phoenician  epi- 
thet, or  as  one  borrowed  from  their  Hebrew  and  Kenite  neighbors,  the 
Phoenicians  applied  the  name  Yahwe,  "  the  life-giver,"  to  their  god  of 
healing,  Eshmun-Adonis,  though  it  may  well  be  that  the  'Ida  which  was 
applied  to  Adonis  was  of  different  origin  from  the'Idw  which  was  borrowed 
fror>.  the  Jews.  For  a  recent  account  of  the  occurrence  of  this  name  in 
Greek  sources,  cf.  Deissmann,  Bible  Studies,  1901,  pp.  321-336. 

1  Piepenbring,  Theology  of  the  Old  Testament,  p.  100  ff.,  and  Smend, 
Lehrbiich,  p.  21,  n.  1. 

*  Yahu-bidi,  cf.  Schrader,  KA T?,  p.  23.    Cf.  KB.,  Vol.  II,  p.  57. 
«  Jud.  1".  *  Deut.  34».  6  EX.  IS". 

•  Cf.  Wellsted's  Travels  in  Arabia,  Vol.  II,  p.  12. 


286  SEMITIC   ORIGINS 


must  have  been  known  ;  and,  no  doubt,  its  culture  helped 
to  keep  alive  among  the  Kenites  the  religious  conceptions 
and  practices  which  their  primitive  forefathers  had  con- 
nected with  that  tree.  Perhaps  the  recollection  of  the 
connection  of  the  Kenites  with  the  palm  is  found  in  the 
story  of  the  union  of  Tamar1  (Palm)  with  Judah.  If 
not  the  Kenites,  the  tale  at  least  is  evidence  for  the  ab- 
sorption in  Judah  of  some  clan  to  which  the  palm  was 
sacred,  —  a  clan  which  seems  to  have  made  the  palm  its 
totem.2  Afterward  there  was  on  the  border  of  Judah  and 
Benjamin  a  place  known  as  Baal-Tamar,  —  a  name  which 
bears  witness  to  the  worship  of  a  god  of  the  primitive  Se- 
mitic type.  There  seems  to  be  some  evidence  that  the 
place  was  once  named  for  the  old  Semitic  goddess ; 8  there 
can,  therefore,  be  little  doubt  that  the  characteristic  Se- 
mitic cult  was  known  among  the  early  clans  which  after- 
ward were  fused  in  the  tribe  of  Judah.  These  clans  may 
not  all  have  been  Kenites,  but  the  union  of  the  Kenites 
with  such  clans,  so  as  to  form  the  tribe  of  Judah,  is  itself 
proof  of  affinity  between  them,  and  an  argument  in  favor 
of  the  similarity  of  their  conceptions  and  institutions. 

The  original  connection  of  Yahwe  with  the  palm  tree 
also  receives  some  confirmation  from  the  fact  that  palm 
trees  formed  a  part  of  the  ornamentation  of  his  temple  as 
conceived  by  Ezekiel 4  ;  and,  as  Ezekiel  is  thought  to 
have  had  as  his  model  the  temple  of  Solomon,  it  is  prob- 
able that  they  had  a  place  in  that  temple  also.  The  place 
of  the  palm  tree  in  the  book  of  Enoch 5  may  be  due  to 
Babylonian  influences  ;  but,  even  then,  such  influences 
would  be  much  more  readily  assimilated  if  there  was  a  lin- 
gering conception  that  such  a  tree  was  fundamentally  con- 
nected with  Yahwe. 

1  Gen.  38. 

2  Winckler,  Geschichte  Israels,  Vol.  II,  p.  104,  would  interpret  this 
story  as  the  conquest  of  Judah  over  the  place,  Baal-Tamar. 

8  Cf.  1  Kgs.  98.     Winckler  (op  cit.,  p.  97  ff.)  is  probably  right  in  omit- 
ting the  conjunction  of  the  Massoretic  text,  and  reading  "  Baalat-Tamar." 
*  Ez.  41".  6  Eth.  Enoch,  24. 


YAH  WE  287 

Our  studies,  therefore,  taken  in  connection  with  the 
work  of  critical  students  of  the  Old  Testament,  enable  us 
to  trace  the  ancestry  of  Yahwe  back  to  primitive  Semitic 
times.  Primarily  Yahwe  was  not  radically  different  from 
other  deities  of  the  steppe  and  the  oasis  ;  and  in  its  ear- 
liest form  the  religion  to  which  Moses  introduced  Israel 
cannot  have  differed  radically  from  other  Semitic  cults. 
An  endeavor  will  be  made  a  little  later  to  estimate  the 
content  of  Mosaism,  and  to  trace  the  process  by  which 
the  distinctly  moral  elements  of  the  Yahweism  of  the 
prophets  were  introduced  ;  but,  for  a  clear  understanding 
of  our  subject,  it  is  necessary  first  to  determine  something 
of  the  ritual  and  the  religious  conceptions  which  be- 
longed to  Yahwe  in  common  with  other  Semitic  gods,  and 
which  passed  with  him  from  the  Kenites  to  the  Israelites. 

Critics  are  agreed 1  that  the  passover,  as  distinct  from 
the  feast  of  unleavened  bread,  belongs  to  primitive  Yah- 
weism. 

It  is  described  even  by  P  (Ex.  121"14)  as  practically  a 
nomadic  festival,  —  a  commensal  meal,  not  unlike  those  of 
Arabic  paganism.  If,  however,  our  previous  investigation 
has  any  bearing  on  the  primitive  nature  of  Yahwe  and  his 
worship,  there  must  have  been  some  sexual  conceptions, 
and  probably  in  the  earlier  days  some  similar  rites,  con- 
nected with  the  passover,  which  in  P's  account  have  been 
eliminated.  It  is,  of  course,  possible  that  among  the  Ken- 
ites less  stress  may  have  been  laid  upon  these  elements 
than  among  the  Semitic  peoples  generally,  but  such  a  sup- 
position is  hazardous  and  cannot  be  accepted  without  clear 
proof.  In  later  times  we  find  Hannah  at  the  time  of 
Yahwe's  festival  —  probably  the  passover — praying  for 
offspring  and  gaining  the  answer  to  her  prayer,2  a  fact 
which  shows  that  there  still  survived  in  connection  with 
Yahwe's  feast  some  of  those  conceptions  of  fertility  which 

1  Cf.  e.g.  W.  R.  Smith,  Bel.  of  Sem.,  2d  ed.,  pp.  333  ff.,  346ft. ;  Well- 
hausen,  Prolegomena,  5th  ed.,  ch.  iii ;  Budde,  Bel.  of  Israel,  p.  73  ff. 
a  1  Sam.  1. 


288  SEMITIC  ORIGINS 


pertained  to  the  primitive  goddess.1  Later  Hebrew  senti- 
ment explained  the  misfortunes  of  the  house  of  Eli 2  on 
the  ground  that  he  did  not  restrain  the  loose  conduct  of 
his  sons  upon  such  occasions,  but  it  is  not  impossible  that 
in  Eli's  time  such  license  may  not  under  the  excitement  of 
Yahwe's  festival  have  been  considered  wrong.  The  anal- 
ogy of  other  Semitic  deities  would  lead  us  to  expect  that 
in  their  worship  of  the  giver  of  life  and  fertility  the  Se- 
mitic tendency  to  license,  of  which  the  Hebrews  had  their 
part,  would  find  expression  among  them  similar  to  that 
which  it  found  elsewhere. 

Budde,3  though  remarking  that  he  can  not  and  would  not 
assert  that  the  worship  of  Yahwe  in  ancient  times  was  re- 
stricted to  this  simple  annual  festival,  makes  no  attempt 
to  determine  what  other  features  it  contained.  Beyond 
the  supposition  that  victories  in  war  were  celebrated  by 
especial  worship  of  the  god,  he  contents  himself  with  the 
supposition  that  the  worship  of  Yahwe  was  of  an  extremely 
simple  nature.  We  are,  however,  now  in  a  position  to 
point  out  that  the  god  of  the  Kenites,  who  inhabited  oases 
like  Elim  and  Jericho,4  and  who  roamed  over  the  steppe, 
would  be  celebrated  in  a  second  festival  in  the  autumn  at 
the  gathering  of  the  date  harvest.6  This  festival,  after  the 
settlement  in  Canaan  and  the  acquirement  of  agricultural 
habits  of  life,  was  naturally  interpreted  as  the  festival  of 
the  grape  gathering,6  but  in  the  book  of  Leviticus,  where 
archaic  practices  are  frequently  preserved,  the  memory 
that  the  feast  had  a  nomadic  origin  is  perpetuated  in  the 
name  "  Feast  of  Booths,  "  7  —  a  name  which  is  rightly  in- 
terpreted as  a  survival  of  nomadic  life.8  At  the  time  of 
the  date  harvest  the  nomads  gather  about  the  oases  to  lay 
in  a  supply  of  dates  and  to  worship  the  god  of  the  date 
tree  ;  their  tents  would  dot  the  outskirts  of  the  oasis  and 
form  a  striking  feature  of  the  landscape.  The  book  of 

1  See  above,  p.  110.  «  Jud.  1».  7  Lev.  23s*. 

2  1  Sam.  2.  s  Above,  p.  Ill  ff.  •  Lev.  23*°-*». 
8  Bel.  of  Israel,  p.  75.              •  Ex.  34»  ;  23i6. 


YAHWE  289 

Leviticus  comes  to  the  aid  of  analogy,  therefore,  to  prove 
a  second  primitive  festival  of  Yahwe.  No  doubt  in  later 
times  the  good  things,  which  the  grape  harvest  with  its 
quickly  fermenting  grape  juice  afforded,  gave  to  the  agri- 
cultural festival  a  more  luxurious  and  boisterous  character 
than  attached  to  the  nomadic  feast  which  it  displaced,  but 
that  the  one  was  merged  into  the  other  there  can  be  no 
doubt. 

This  autumn  festival  was,  as  we  have  seen  above,1  pre- 
ceded by  the  rite  of  wailing  for  Tammuz,  —  a  custom 
which,  as  Robertson  Smith  pointed  out,2  has  survived  in  the 
fasting  and  humiliation  which  preceded  the  Hebrew  Day 
of  Atonement,  —  a  day  which  itself  preceded  this  autumn 
festival.  The  ritual  of  the  Day  of  Atonement  is  probably 
a  survival  under  a  new  interpretation  of  the  worship  of 
Tammuz,  or  equivalent  god,  in  connection  with  the  wor- 
ship of  Yahwe,  for  there  is  no  more  reason  to  suppose  that 
this  was  borrowed  from  the  customs  of  the  Canaanitish 
Baalim  than  that  the  date  feast  itself  was.  If,  then,  the  wor- 
ship of  Tammuz  was  a  part  of  the  primitive  cult  of  Yahwe,  as 
it  was  of  other  Semitic  cults,  one  may  naturally  ask  if  the 
primitive  goddess  Ashtart  was  not  also  originally  connected 
with  Yahwe.  On  this  point  we  have  no  direct  evidence. 
A  number  of  scholars  3  recognize  in  the  wailing  for  Jeph- 
thah's  daughter4  a  survival  of  the  Tammuz  wailing.  The 
story  as  it  has  been  preserved  to  us  makes  it  clear  that  the 
wailing  was  performed,  not  for  a  deceased  god  as  at  Gebal,6 
but  for  a  goddess  as  at  Carthage.6  Whether  this  cult  in 
Gilead  was  directly  connected  with  the  Yahwe  cult  in 
early  times  is  exceedingly  problematical.  It  was  probably 
connected  with  some  local  clan  cult  of  the  tribe  of  Gad  or 
Manasseh.  Winckler  has  with  much  acuteuess  shown7 

1  p.  100.  *  Eel.  of  Sem.,  2d  ed.,  p.  411  ff.,  especially  p.  414. 

1  W.  R.  Smith,  op.  cit.,  p.  416;  Moore,   "Judges,"  in  Inter.   Crit. 
Com.,  p.  305  ;  and  Winckler,  Geschichte  Israels,  Vol.  II,  p.  140  ff. 
*  Jud.  11*>.  *  Above,  p.  245.  «  Above,  p.  256  ff. 

1  Geschichte  Israels,  Vol.  II. 
u 


290  SEMITIC  OKIGINS 


that  many  of  the  traditions  of  patriarchal  Israel  go  back 
to  myths  of  Tammuz  and  Ashtoreth.  No  doubt  in  his 
application  of  this  solution  to  the  period  of  David  and 
after,  he  has  applied  his  key  where  it  is  unnecessary, 
but  many  of  his  suggestions  seem  exceedingly  plausible. 
If  they  are  true,  this  common  Semitic  mythology  was  well 
known  in  ancient  Israel,  and  it  is  surely  a  gratuitous  sup- 
position to  claim  that  it  was  all  borrowed  from  other 
sources  than  the  Kenites.  Analogy  thus  leads  us  to  believe 
that  probably  the  Yahwe  worship  of  the  Kenites  contained 
an  Ashtart.  If  such  was  the  case,  some  will  be  ready  to 
urge  that  that  is  no  evidence  that  such  worship  was 
adopted  by  Moses.  It  must  be  admitted,  however,  that  if 
the  Kenites  associated  an  Ashtart  with  Yahwe,  Moses  and 
the  Hebrews  would  inevitably  worship  her  too.  Converts 
to  a  new  religion  are  not  its  reformers,  but  its  blindest  devo- 
tees. Gratitude  to  the  deity  who  had  delivered  them  from 
Egypt  would  compel  the  early  Israelites  to  take  the  cult 
of  that  god  over  in  toto.  For  reasons,  however,  which 
will  be  adduced  a  little  later  such  a  goddess,  if  connected 
with  Yahwe,  must  as  a  goddess  of  the  steppe  have  had  a 
character  comparatively  mild  and  consequently  innocent 
as  compared  with  the  Ashtaroth  of  more  bountiful  and 
luxurious  Canaan,  or  the  Ashtart  of  the  mercantile,  rich, 
and  luxurious  Sidon.  Increasing  wealth  increased  the 
evil  tendencies  of  this  cult ;  thus  Ashtart,  "  the  abomina- 
tion of  the  Sidonians,"  became  a  byword  even  among  her 
Semitic  kinsmen. 

Along  with  the  two  feasts  which  can  be  traced  to  prim- 
itive Yahweism,  and  along  with  Tammuz  and  Ashtart,  we 
must  place  the  pillar  (masseba),  common  to  Yahwe  with 
other  Semitic  deities,  and  which  continued  to  represent 
him  down  to  the  time  of  Hosea,1  and  probably  till  the  re- 
form of  Josiah.  Here  too  must  be  placed  the  'ashera, 
which  marked  the  limits  of  primitive  Semitic  shrines,  and 
which  were  not  eliminated  from  Yahwe's  temple  till  the 
1  Gen.  2822,  Hos.  3*,  Deut.  76,  and  2  Kgs.  231*. 


YAHWE  291 

time  of  Josiah.1  If  the  foregoing  argument  be  valid, 
these  objects  must  have  been  as  much  a  part  of  the 
Yahwe  ritual  of  early  days  as  of  that  of  any  Semitic  god. 

Yah  we,  the  god  of  the  Kenites,  then, — probably  Yahwe 
as  Moses  knew  him,  —  was  a  Semitic  god  of  the  oasis  and 
the  wilderness,  of  the  type  found  in  the  Arabian  environ- 
ment. He  was  a  god  of  life  in  the  broad  sense  of  that 
term  ;  the  Tammuz  wailing  was  a  part  of  his  ritual ; 
probably  to  his  myths  were  attached  all  those  feminine 
associations  which  are  implied  in  the  wailing  for  Tammuz. 
This  god,  because  of  the  nature  of  the  weather  in  the 
region  where  his  people  lived,  had  become  associated  in 
their  minds  with  clouds,  storms,  and  thunder  ;  because  of 
their  warlike  struggles  with  their  neighbors,  he  was  also 
regarded  as  the  giver  of  victory  in  war.  The  new  cult, 
to  which  Moses  introduced  Israel,  did  not,  therefore, 
differ  as  much  from  the  worship  of  their  neighbors,  or 
even  from  their  own  former  clan  cults,  as  even  critical 
scholars  are  wont  to  suppose.2  The  chief  and  significant 
difference,  as  has  often  been  said,  lay  in  the  fact  that  the 
worshippers  were  bound  to  the  god  by  covenant  and  not 
by  kinship  ; 3  but  in  this  difference,  as  will  be  pointed 
out  in  more  detail  below,  lay  the  possibility  of  all  spirit- 
ual progress. 

Israel,  with  her  new  faith,  entered  soon  into  a  new  land 
—  a  land  where  nature  was  more  benignant  than  on  the 
steppe  ;  where  human  effort  was  rewarded  with  more 
abundant  harvests,  so  that  to  those  accustomed  to  the 
poorer  life  of  the  wilderness  it  seemed  a  "  land  flowing 
with  milk  and  honey."  In  this  land  they  found  Canaan- 
itish  tribes  dwelling,  whose  gods  had  originally  been  gods 
of  the  wilderness,  like  Yahwe,  with  a  comparatively 
simple  ritual,  but  who  in  their  more  luxurious  environ- 
ment had  become  considerably  transformed.  The  revolt- 

1  2  Kgs.  23*-  M.  «  Cf.  Budde,  Eel.  of  Israel,  p.  73  ff. 

•  Cf.  W.  R.  Smith,  Eel.  of  Sem.,  2d  ed.,  p.  318  ff. ;  Piepenbring,  Theol- 
ogy of  the  Old  Testament,  p.  30;  and  Budde,  op  cit.,  p.  35  ff.,  esp.  p.  38. 


292  SEMITIC   ORIGINS 


ing  aspects  of  their  worship  had  become  more  revolting, 
the  inequalities  among  their  worshippers  much  greater. 
How  inevitable  it  was  that  Israel  should  worship  these 
deities  Budde  has  depicted  with  great  clearness  and  force.1 
It  was  the  commingling  of  their  worship  with  that  of 
Yahwe  which  introduced  into  the  latter  some  elements  of 
civilization  which  were  much  needed,  but  which  had  been 
lacking  in  the  Yahweism  of  the  desert.  Ultimately,  too, 
these  Canaanitish  cults  proved  not  only  as  reagents  for 
the  purification  of  Israel  from  the  old  clan  cults,  as 
Budde  supposes,2  but  from  the  baser  and  grosser  elements 
inherent  in  itself.  How  this  came  about  we  shall  try  to 
sketch  presently ;  but,  for  the  sake  of  clearness  of 
thought,  it  will  first  be  necessary  to  consider  a  little  more 
fully  what  the  moral  contents  of  Mosaism  were. 

Much  effort  has  been  made  to  maintain  the  position 
which  criticism  had  reached  in  the  time  of  Ewald,  that 
the  kernel  of  the  Elohistic  decalogue,3  which  is  repeated 
in  Deuteronomy,4  is  of  Mosaic  origin.6  It  is  of  little  avail 
to  point  out  that  the  Egyptian  book  of  the  dead,  which  is 
older  than  Moses,  contains  nearly  all  the  moral  require- 
ments of  the  decalogue.6  Possibility  of  existence  does 
not  demonstrate  actual  existence  ;  and  the  actual  exist- 
ence of  the  moral  decalogue  in  the  time  of  Moses  seems 
to  be  made  practically  impossible  by  the  existence  of  a  rit- 
ualistic decalogue  in  J  7  which  is  evidently  older  than  the 
moral  decalogue  of  E.8  If  the  Pentateuch  contains  any 

i  Op  cit.,  pp.  42-60.  2  Ibid.,  p.  71.  8  Ex.  20.          4  Ch.  5. 

6  Cf.  Dillman,  Alttestamentliche  Theologie,  pp.  58,  105,  228,  and  426  ff. ; 
Kittel,  History  of  Israel,  Vol.  I,  p.  198 ;  Robertson,  Early  Religion  of 
Israel,  p.  70,  n. ;  Bruce,  Apologetics,  p.  209 ;  and  Peters,  President's 
address  before  the  Society  of  Biblical  Literature  and  Exegesis,  December, 
1900.  The  argument  that  the  author  of  Deut.  10  must  have  known  the 
moral  decalogue  in  J  is  not  convincing. 

6  See  ch.  cxxv  of  the  Book  of  the  Dead  in  PSBA.,  Vol.  XVII,  p.  216  ff. 

7  Ex.  34. 

8  Cf.  Wellhausen,  History  of  Israel,  p.  392  ff. ;  Prolegomena,  5th  ed., 
p.  400  ff.;  Kuenen,  Religion  of  Israel,  p.  244  ff. ;  Briggs,  Hexateuch, 
p.  189  ff.  ;   and  Budde,  Rel.  of  Israel,  p.  172,  n. 


YAHWE  293 

decalogue  which  dates  from  the  time  of  Moses  it  must, 
accordingly,  be  the  decalogue  of  J,  which  reads  as  fol- 
lows :  — 

1.  Thou  shalt  worship  no  other  god. 

2.  Thou  shalt  make  thee  no  molten  gods. 

3.  The  feast  of  unleavened  bread  thou  shalt  keep. 

4.  The  firstling  of  an  ass  thou  shalt  redeem  with  a 
lamb.     All  the  firstborn  of  thy  sons  thou  shalt  redeem. 

5.  None  shall  appear  before  me  empty. 

6.  Six  days  thou  shalt  work,  but  on  the  seventh  thou 
shalt  rest. 

7.  Thou  shalt  observe  the  feast  of  weeks  and  of  ingath- 
ering at  the  year's  end. 

8.  Thou  shalt  not  offer  the  blood  of  my  sacrifice  with 
leavened  bread,  neither  shall  the  sacrifice  of  the  passover 
be  left  until  the  morning. 

9.  The  first  fruits  of  thy  ground  thou  shalt  bring  unto 
the  house  of  Yahwe,  thy  God. 

10.    Thou  shalt  not  seethe  a  kid  in  its  mother's  milk. 

These  commands  are  almost  purely  ritualistic,  and  at 
first  glance  betray,  perhaps,  to  the  unpractised  eye  noth- 
ing which  might  not  be  Mosaic.  True,  the  command  to 
worship  no  other  god  was  not  kept ;  but  it  is  neverthe- 
less possible  that  it  may  have  existed  as  a  prohibition  of 
the  introduction  of  other  gods  into  Yahwe's  proper,  do- 
main. The  second  command  of  this  decalogue  is  really 
not  a  prohibition  of  idols,  but  only  of  expensive  idols. 
In  the  nomadic  life  and  among  the  poorer  after  the  settle- 
ment in  Canaan  there  were  two  kinds  of  idols  :  "  graven 
images,"  made  of  wood,  and  "  molten  gods,"  cast  of  silver 
and  gold.1  Sometimes  the  latter  were  of  wood  overlaid 
with  gold.  What  the  decalogue  of  J  really  prohibits  is 
the  making  of  these  molten  gods,  i.e.  the  carrying  of  lux- 
ury and  extravagance  into  the  worship  of  Yahwe.  It  is 
the  protest  of  Spartan  simplicity  and  religious  conserva- 

1  Cf.  Moore.  "Judges,"  in  Inter.  Crit.  Com.,  p.  375. 


294  SEMITIC  ORIGINS 


tism  against  wealth  and  innovations.  This  command 
might,  therefore,  well  be  nomadic.  The  same  may  be 
said  of  the  redemption  of  the  firstlings  of  men  and  of 
asses  ;  it  is  likely  that  human  sacrifices  were  outgrown, 
except  upon  extraordinary  occasions,  before  the  settle- 
ment in  Canaan,  and  other  reasons  may  have  led  to  the 
exemption  of  the  firstborn  of  the  ass.  The  command  that 
none  should  appear  before  Yahwe  empty,  i.  e.  each  should 
bring  a  gift  or  sacrifice  of  some  kind,  is  as  appropriate  to 
the  life  of  the  wilderness  as  to  that  of  settled  Canaan. 
The  exclusion  of  leaven  from  Yahwe's  sacrifices,  and  the 
obligation  to  consume  the  passover  victim  before  morning, 
are  both  obligations  which  were  felt  in  the  nomadic  form 
of  life.1  The  same  is  true  of  the  prohibition  to  seethe  a 
kid  in  its  mother's  milk. 

A  careful  examination  of  some  of  the  remaining  com- 
mands produces,  however,  a  different  impression.  The 
keeping  of  the  feast  of  unleavened  bread  is  an  agricultu- 
ral and  not  a  nomadic  regulation.  It  must  have  been  in- 
troduced into  the  present  decalogue  after  the  settlement 
in  Canaan  ;  but  it  is  quite  possible  that  it  displaced  a 
command  to  keep  the  passover  which  stood  in  an  earlier 
nomadic  decalogue.  As  the  feast  of  unleavened  bread 
and  the  passover  were  merged  into  one,  it  would  be  very 
easy  for  the  agricultural  name  in  course  of  time  to  dis- 
place the  nomadic.  Similarly,  the  command  to  observe 
the  feast  of  weeks  is  an  obligation  of  agricultural  and  not 
of  nomadic  life.  As  it  stands  it  is  coupled  with  a  com- 
mand to  observe  the  feast  of  "  ingathering,"  or  of  "  taber- 
nacles." In  the  later  Hebrew  calendar  these  two  feasts 
occurred  some  months  apart ;  why,  then,  should  they  be 
here  united  in  one  command?  Is  it  because  the  command 
is  but  a  rewording  of  an  earlier  nomadic  law  expressive 
of  the  obligation  to  observe  the  Tammuz  wailing  and 

1  Cf.  the  sacrifice  of  the  Arabs,  witnessed  by  the  son  of  Nilus,  which 
was  consumed  before  the  sun  obscured  the  morning  star.  See  W.  R. 
Smith,  Eel.  of  Sem.,  2d  ed.,  p.  338. 


YAHWE  295 

keep  the  date  harvest  festival  ?  Such  a  theory  is  not  im- 
possible and  it  is  certainly  attractive.  If  we  take  this 
view,  the  substance  of  nine  of  these  commands  may  with 
plausibility  be  attributed  to  Moses. 

Of  the  tenth,  the  command  to  keep  the  seventh  day, 
the  same  in  the  opinion  of  some  scholars  cannot  be  said. 
The  sabbath  seems  to  Jastrow  and  Budde  to  have  been  of 
Babylonian  origin,  and  not  a  part  of  the  religion  of  the 
steppe.1  Budde  thinks  it  became  an  institution  of  Yah- 
weism  during  those  years  when  Israel  was  making  the 
transition  from  nomadic  to  agricultural  life,  and  when 
Yahwe  was  being  transformed  from  a  god  of  the  oasis 
and  the  steppe  to  a  Palestinian  Baal.  Perhaps  it  was 
then  organized  into  the  form  in  which  we  now  have  it,  but 
as  Toy2  has  shown,  it  probably  goes  back  to  a  taboo 
which  is  considerably  older.  Probably,  then,  this  com- 
mand has  displaced  the  expression  of  this  early  taboo  in 
an  earlier  nomadic  decalogue.  We  have  now  no  means 
of  proving  this,  though  from  what  has  been  said  of  the 
other  commands,  it  does  not  seem  improbable. 

We  conclude,  then,  that  Moses  probably  summed  up  the 
precepts  of  the  worship  of  Yahwe  in  ten  "  words  " ;  that  if 
he  did  so,  the  decalogue  of  J  has  more  nearly  preserved 
them  than  any  other  part  of  the  Pentateuch,  but  that 
even  the  decalogue  of  J  as  it  now  stands  has  undergone 
some  changes  since  the  time  of  Moses. 

In  close  connection  with  the  decalogue  there  stands  in 
the  Old  Testament  the  ark,  called  variously  "the  ark," 
"the  ark  of  Yahwe,"3  "the  ark  of  the  covenant  of 
Yahwe,"  4  and  "  the  ark  of  the  testimony,"  5  which,  accord- 
ing to  a  late  tradition,6  contained  the  decalogue  written  on 
tables  of  stone.  This  ark  seems  to  have  been  a  box  simi- 
lar to  those  which  the  Egyptians  and  Babylonians  used 

1  Cf.'  Jastrow  in  American  Journal  of  Theology,  Vol.  II,  pp.  312-352, 
and  Budde,  Bel.  of  Israel,  p.  66  ff. 

2  Cf.  JBL.,  Vol.  XVIII,  pp.  190-195. 

«  In  J,  E,  and  Samuel.  *  In  D.  *  In  P.  «  1  Kgs.  8*  21. 


296  SEMITIC  ORIGINS 


for  carrying  their  gods  from  place  to  place.1  Among  the 
Hebrews  the  ark  probably  formed  a  kind  of  nomadic 
temple.2  The  fact  that  in  the  Judaean  source,  J,  the  ark 
plays  no  prominent  part,  but  Yahwe  is  represented  as 
dwelling  at  Sinai,  while  his  angel  goes  before  Israel,3  and 
in  E,  the  Ephraimite  source,  the  ark  plays  a  much  more 
prominent  part,4  led  Wellhausen  and  Stade  to  believe  5 
that  the  ark  was  originally  the  movable  sanctuary  of  the 
Joseph  tribes  from  whence,  after  the  union  of  the  tribes, 
it  was  adopted  by  the  nation.  This  view  has  been 
adopted  by  many  others.2  As  Moses  was  the  deliverer  of 
the  Joseph  tribes,  it  is  altogether  probable  that  the  ark 
was  of  Mosaic  origin,  and  was  a  part  of  the  Yahwe  ritual 
of  the  time  of  the  wilderness  sojourn. 

The  difficulties  with  reference  to  the  decalogue  and  the 
several  versions  in  which  it  exists,  have  led  these  scholars 
to  doubt  the  accuracy  of  the  tradition  that  the  ark  con- 
tained a  copy  of  the  table  of  ten  words.  They  have  sup- 
posed that  it  contained  a  sacred  stone  or  aerolite,  similar 
to  the  sacred  stone  in  the  Qa'aba  at  Mecca,  which  was  a 
kind  of  fetich.  This  may  be  true,  but  our  analysis  of  the 
decalogue  of  J  has  shown  us  how  possible  it  is  that  a 
nomadic  decalogue  of  ritual  lay  back  of  J's  ten  words. 
It  would  be  most  natural  for  such  a  decalogue  to  be  in- 
scribed on  such  a  sacred  stone.  The  tradition,  therefore, 
seems  worthy  of  credence. 

1  Wilkinson,  Ancient  Egyptians,  Vol.  Ill,  p.  289 ;  Delitzsch,  Assyrisches 
Handworterbuch,  under  elippu,  and  "Isaiah"  in  SHOT.,  p.  78. 

2  Cf.  Wellhausen,  Prolegomena,  5th  ed.,  p.  46,  n.,  and  Heidentum,  2d 
ed.,  p.  215  ;  Stade,  Geschichte,  Vol.  I,  p.  457  ;  Nowack,  Archceologie,  Vol. 
II,  p.  3  ff. ;  Benzinger,  Archceologie,  p.  367  ff. ;   Winckler,   Geschichte 
Israels,  Vol.  I,  p.  70  ff. ;  Couard  in  ZATW.,  Vol.  XII,  p.  53  ff.  ;  and  Hop- 
kins in  JA08.,  Vol.  XX,  pp.  303-308. 

8  Ex.  322. 

*  Even  if  it  be  true,  as  Driver  supposes  ("Deuteronomy"  in  Inter. 
Crit.  Com.,  p.  118),  that  J  originally  described  how  Moses  made  the  ark, 
that  would  not  affect  this  conclusion,  for  by  the  time  of  J,  as  we  have 
pointed  out  above,  many  of  the  Ephraimitic  traditions  had  become  cur- 
rent in  Judah  and  are  mingled  with  the  Judsean  in  J's  writing. 

5  See  references  in  n.  2,  above. 


YAHWE  297 

Couard  believes 1  that  the  ark  was  carried  from  Jeru- 
salem by  the  Egyptian  king,  Shishak,  in  the  time  of  Reho- 
boam.  That  would  adequately  explain  its  disappearance 
from  the  later  history.  That  disappearance  would  also 
give  scope  to  the  traditions  to  substitute  without  con- 
scious violence  the  ethical  decalogue  of  later  times  for  the 
ritualistic  decalogue  of  earlier  days,  in  response  to  the 
advance  of  the  moral  consciousness. 

Moses  then,  we  may  suppose,  gave  Israel  its  Yah  we 
worship,  its  ark  as  a  movable  temple,  and  a  ritualistic 
decalogue.  In  course  of  time  the  nation  passed  on  from 
the  steppe,  and,  attracted  by  the  more  fertile  fields  of 
Palestine,  won  its  way  into  Canaan.  It  was  then  most 
natural  for  them  to  give  some  worship  to  the  Baals. 
Later,  in  the  time  of  David,  it  was  thought  that  when  one 
entered  upon  a  new  land  it  was  necessary  to  worship  the  god 
of  that  land,2  and  centuries  later  than  this  the  Babyloni- 
ans whom  Sargon  imported  into  Samaria  found  it  neces- 
sary to  propitiate  the  god  of  the  new  land  in  which  they 
found  themselves.3  That  the  Israelites  actually  wor- 
shipped the  Baalim  Hosea  directly  testifies.4  The  worship 
of  Yahwe  as  their  own  tribal  god  was  also  maintained,  and 
in  process  of  time,  as  Budde  has  so  well  depicted,5  Yahwe 
became  a  Baal,  —  a  god  of  the  land.  Agricultural  festi- 
Tals,  once  celebrated  to  the  Baalim,  became  festivals 
of  Yahwe,  and  agricultural  functions,  once  foreign  to 
him,  were  now  thought  to  be  his. 

The  proof  that  Yahwe  became  a  Baal  is  of  various 
kinds,  as  follows : 6  1.  Saul  and  David,  both  champions 
of  the  worship  of  Yahwe,  gave  names  to  their  sons  into 
which  Baal  enters  as  a  constituent  element,  as  Ish-Baal, 
Meri-Baal,  and  Baalyada,  —  names  in  which  critics  gener- 
ally agree  that  Baal  is  an  epithet  of  Yahwe.  2.  The 
shrines  of  Baal  became  in  many  places,  as  Bethel, 

i  ZA  TW.,  Vol.  XII,  p.  84.  4  Hos.  2*. 

3  1  Sam.  2619.  6  pe L  of  Israel,  ch.  ii. 

»  2  Kgs.  17«-«<.  «  Cf.  Budde,  op  cit.,  p.  106  ff. 


298  SEMITIC  ORIGINS 


Schechem,  and  Hebron,  shrines  of  Yahwe.  The  processes 
by  which  this  was  accomplished  are  described  to  us  in 
Jud.  6^  It  resulted  from  the  conquest  of  Yahwe  and 
Israel  over  the  Canaanites  and  the  local  Baalim.1  Yahwe 
had  proven  himself  stronger  than  these  gods  by  conquer- 
ing their  land  and  their  shrines.  Gradually,  as  he  became 
associated  with  their  shrines,  traditions  arose  to  explain 
how  he  had  consecrated  them  in  former  days  by  revealing 
himself  to  patriarchs  or  heroes  there,  so  that  Israel  came 
to  believe  that  Yahwe  was  only  conquering  back  that 
which  had  been  his  own.  The  old  rites  continued,  but 
now  they  were  rites  of  Yahwe.  3.  The  transformation 
of  Yahwe's  ritual  from  the  simple  nomadic  to  the  rich 
agricultural  type,  and  its  fusion  with  previously  exist- 
ing Canaanitish  ritual,  is  another  proof  that  Yahwe  be- 
came a  Baal.  To  this  transformation  the  prophets  bear 
direct  witness,  —  Amos  declaring  that  such  ritual  formed 
no  part  of  the  wilderness  religion,2  and  Hosea  that  Yahwe 
was  the  giver  of  plenty.3  4.  Another  proof  that  Yahwe 
became  a  Baal,  is  the  fact  that  the  bull  became  his  symbol. 
It  has  been  pointed  out  already4  that  in  agricultural 
communities  the  bull  frequently  became  the  symbol  of 
the  deity,  who  was  regarded  as  the  giver  of  agricultural 
plenty.  This  became  true  also  of  Yahwe  in  Israel. 
Jeroboam  could  say  of  the  bull  images  at  Bethel  and  Dan, 
which  from  their  diminutive  size  were  called  "calves," 
"  Behold  thy  god,  O  Israel,  which  brought  thee  up  from 
the  land  of  Egypt,"6  i.e.  "behold  Yahwe."  Probably 
similar  images  were  in  the  temple  of  Yahwe  at  Gilgal.6 
In  the  temple  at  Jerusalem  the  bull  symbols  appeared  in 
another  form ;  they  there  supported  the  great  laver. 
From  such  facts  as  these  it  is  clear  that  when  Israel  con- 
quered Canaan,  Yahwe  became  a  Baal, —  a  god  of  the 
land.  This  accounts  for  the  fact  that  Naaman  took  Pales- 

1  Budde,  op.  cit.,  p.  103  ff.  4  Above,  p.  201  ff. 

2  Amos  521  ff-.  6  1  Kgs.  1228. 

*  Hos.  28.  «  Amos  54  ff-,  Hos.  4",  916,  12". 


YAHWE  299 

tinian  soil  to  Damascus  in  order  that  he  might  worship 
Yahwe  there.1  By  the  time  of  Elisha,  Yahwe  was  so  much 
a  Baal  that  he  could  be  worshipped  only  on  Palestinian  soil. 
For  the  same  reason  at  a  later  time  the  Babylonians,  resi- 
dent in  Samaria,  learned  the  worship  of  Yahwe,  so  that  as 
god  of  the  land  he  might  not  send  lions  upon  them.2 

In  the  development  of  Yahwe  into  a  Baal,  his  cult,  or 
rather  the  conception  of  him  held  by  his  worshippers,  gained 
something  which  was  necessary  before  Yahwe  could  per- 
form for  the  world  the  lofty  service  which  lay  before  him, 
for  it  passed  from  the  narrow,  tribal  type  of  religion,  hos- 
tile to  culture  and  civilization  into  the  broader  sphere  of 
a  national  religion,  capable  of  adapting  itself  to  the  pur- 
poses of  a  finer  and  more  civilized  life.  This  transforma- 
tion was  accomplished,  as  Budde  has  pointed  out,3  by  the 
achievement  of  Israelitish  mastery  over  Palestine  and  the 
united  efforts  of  prophets,  priests,  and  kings.  Meantime, 
on  the  outskirts  of  the  nation  lingered  the  Rechabites,  a 
conservative  force,  maintaining  the  nomadic  ideal,  and  pre- 
senting a  continual  protest  against  what  they  regarded  as 
the  degenerate  tendency  which  was  Baalizing  Yahwe. 
The  part  performed  by  this  element  of  the  nation  was  in 
the  end  quite  as  necessary  as  that  of  their  opponents  for 
the  preparation  of  the  Yahwe  cult  for  its  high  service  to 
mankind. 

This  transformation  of  the  god  of  the  steppe  into  the 
Baal  of  a  settled  community  was  by  no  means  an  experi- 
ence peculiar  to  Yahwe  ;  it  occurred  wherever  the  nomads 
of  the  oasis  and  the  desert  passed  over  into  settled  agri- 
cultural communities.  The  Baals  of  Canaan  were,  as  we 
have  seen,4  themselves  only  gods  who,  like  Yahwe,  had 
sprung  from  Semitic  nomadic  society  and  had  been  Baal- 
ized  a  little  in  advance  of  him.  Yahwe's  kinship  to  them 
hastened  in  his  case  the  Baalizing  process. 

While  this  Baalizing  of  Yahwe  was  a  necessary  part  of 

i  2  Kgs.  6".  «  Rel.  of  Israel,  p.  77  ff. 

*  2  Kgs.  17s7  ».  «  Above,  pp.  147-160. 


300  SEMITIC  ORIGINS 


the  preparation  for  the  place  he  was  to  hold  in  the  religion 
of  the  human  race,  for  that  place  he  would  have  been  no 
more  fitted  than  any  other  Semitic  Baal,  if  providentially 
the  Baalizing  process  had  not  been  checked  at  the  proper 
point,  and  Yah  we  forever  differentiated  in  the  minds  of  his 
worshippers  from  these  gods.  The  outward  events  which 
were  the  occasion  of  this  differentiation  were  as  follows : 
In  the  reign  of  Ahab  the  natural  assimilation  of  Yahwe 
to  Baal  was  interrupted  by  the  violent  introduction  of  a 
foreign  influence.  Ahab  had  married  a  Tyrian  princess, 
who  was  of  course  allowed  to  bring  the  worship  of  her 
native  gods  with  her.  Being  of  an  ambitious  nature,  she 
prompted  her  husband  to  trample  upon  the  popular  rights,1 
and  thereby  aroused  the  sentiment  of  the  people  against 
her.  She  seems  to  have  looked  with  disdain  upon  the 
simpler  religious  rites  of  her  new  and  comparatively  rustic 
home,  and  to  have  endeavored  to  introduce  the  more  ornate 
and  voluptuous  cult  of  Tyre.  Tyre  was  at  the  time  one 
of  the  world's  great  emporia  ;  through  its  sea-faring  mer- 
chants the  wealth  of  the  nations  flowed  into  it.2  Its 
riches  had  pampered  the  lusts  of  its  citizens,  and  had  made 
the  excesses  of  that  Semitic  worship,  the  rites  of  which 
appealed  so  strongly  to  the  passions  of  men,  as  much 
worse  than  the  rites  of  that  worship  at  Samaria  as  those 
of  Samaria  were  worse  than  those  of  the  wandering  tribes 
of  the  steppe.  It  was  this  new  and  sudden  excess  of 
wantonness  combined  with  oppression  which  aroused  the 
opposition  of  the  conservatives  in  Israel.  This  opposition 
was  headed  by  Elijah  the  Tishbite,  from  Gilead,  a  country 
of  pasture  lands  where  the  forms  of  nomadic  life  and  the 
original  ritual  of  the  worship  of  Yahwe  were  probably 
less  disturbed  by  the  settled  life  of  Israel  than  in  the  more 
productive  regions  west  of  the  Jordan.  Accompanying 
this  new  assertion  of  popular  rights  and  of  Yahwe's  abhor- 
rence of  foreign  gods  and  oppressive,  debased  morals,  there 
was  manifested  a  new  and  unique  conception  of  God  and 
*  1  Kgs.  2  2  Ez.  27,  28. 


YAHWE  301 

of  ethical  standards.  How  far  these  were  manifested  in 
Elijah  himself  it  is  impossible  to  say  ;  but  his  work  was 
in  successive  generations  taken  up  by  Elisha,  Amos,  Hosea, 
Isaiah,  and  the  great  succession  of  literary  prophets  down 
to  the  close  of  the  Babylonian  exile,  and  from  Amos  on- 
ward the  new  moral  and  monotheistic  conception  of  Yahwe 
can  be  traced.  This  Ls  not  the  place  in  which  to  sketch 
in  detail  this  prophetic  struggle  ;  those  who  wish  to  read 
it  may  easily  do  so  in  the  masterly  little  treatise  of  Budde l 
so  frequently  mentioned  already. 

So  far  as  the  outward  features  of  this  struggle  were 
concerned,  it  seemed  at  the  start  to  be  a  battle  between  the 
nomadic  ideal  of  Yahwe  and  the  excessively  voluptuous 
Baal  of  a  wealthy  Semitic  city, — a  struggle  which  ap- 
pears perfectly  natural,  and  indeed  inevitable.  We  can- 
not, however,  follow  the  story  of  the  conflict  far  without 
perceiving  that  there  were  unexpected  issues  involved  in 
it,  —  that  unique  ethical  standards  and  conceptions  of  God 
were  here  struggling  for  expression,  standards  which 
are  quite  unaccounted  for  by  their  environment.  From 
Amos  onward  practical  monotheism,  social  justice,  and 
purity  —  a  justice  and  purity  which  are  thought  to  have 
their  root  in  the  very  nature  of  Yahwe  —  are  proclaimed. 

The  way  for  this  proclamation  had  been  prepared  by 
the  covenant  which  Moses  had  mediated  between  Yahwe 
and  his  people.  A  god  bound  to  his  people  by  kinship 
could  never  exert  upon  his  worshippers  an  influence  for 
moral  elevation  which  should  transcend  their  inclinations. 
Like  an  Arabic  sheik,  he  might  be  angry  and  neglect  his 
people  for  a  time,  but  in  the  last  extremity  he  must  help 
them,  for  his  position,  nay,  his  very  existence,  depended 
upon  that  of  his  kinsmen.  With  a  covenant  god  all  this 
was  changed.  Bound  to  his  people  by  contract  only, 
with  an  independent  existence  quite  apart  from  them, 
he  could  easily  cast  off  an  unfaithful  people  who  refused 
to  fulfil  their  part  of  the  covenant.  Upon  this  fact  the 
1  Religion  of  Israel  to  the  Exile. 


302  SEMITIC  ORIGINS 


prophets  seized,  and  from  generation  to  generation  urged 
it  with  persistence  and  force.1 

This  fact  would  have  had  little  significance,  however, 
but  for  the  new  moral  and  spiritual  conception  of  Yah  we 
which  they  taught  along  with  it.  Never  in  the  Semitic 
world  before  had  such  lofty  conceptions  of  God  been  pro- 
claimed ;  never  had  such  ideals  of  life  been  urged  upon  a 
people.  While  these  ideals  form  the  burden  of  the  utter- 
ance of  all  the  literary  prophets,  they  did  not  begin  with 
them  ;  they  had  been  felt  in  part  for  some  time  in  those 
prophetic  circles  in  which  the  J  and  E  documents  were 
composed,  and  probably  in  germ  were  harbored  in  the 
breast  of  Elijah.  This  prophetic  conception  of  Yahwe 
aimed  to  bring  back  his  cult  to  what  the  prophets  con- 
ceived to  be  its  primitive  purity.  Such  in  every  age  has 
been  the  goal  of  reform,  —  to  establish  Mosaism,  or 
apostolic  Christianity,  or  whatever  the  primitive  form  of 
the  religion  in  which  the  reform  is  working  may  have 
been.  We  have  not  yet  reached  a  point  of  religious  cul- 
ture, where  men  generally  are  willing  to  work  for,  or  to 
accept,  a  religious  ideal  which  they  are  not  persuaded 
is  primitive.  To  consciously  strive  for  an  entirely  new 
ideal  is  even  now  a  rare  phenomenon  in  religious  ac- 
tivity. So  the  prophets  labored  and  struggled, — Amos, 
to  get  rid  of  feasts  which  he  declared  formed  no  part 
of  the  wilderness  religion ; 2  Hosea,  to  take  Israel  away 
from  her  Baal  lovers  back  to  the  wilderness  ideal  as  he 
conceived  it,  of  conjugal  fidelity  to  Yahwe  ; 3  and  subse- 
quent prophets  take  up  similar  plaints  and  labor  for  similar 
ends.4 

In  this  connection  it  will  be  of  help  to  a  clear  under- 
standing of  the  work  of  the  prophets  and  the  outward  aids 
to  their  success  to  note  four  facts :  1.  In  this  long  battle 
Yahwe  was  not  only  differentiated  from  the  Baals  and  the 

lSee  e.g.  Amos  323;  Hos.  2;  Isa.  51-7;  Jer.  3lff-;  Ez.  20;  and  Isa. 
*  Ch.  S2*-25.  «  Hos.  2.  «  Cf.  e.g.  Isa.  I13-15  and  Jer.  3. 


YAHWE  303 

clan  cults  of  the  various  Israelitish  tribes,1  but  from  his 
own  original  nature.  The  Yahwe  whose  ancestry  we 
have  been  tracing  was,  as  Paul  would  say,  the  Yahwe 
according  to  the  flesh  ;  in  the  age  of  the  prophets  the 
Yahwe  according  to  the  Spirit  appeared  in  the  world. 
Yahwe  at  the  close  of  the  prophetic  period —  Yahwe,  the 
one  God  of  the  world  —  was  as  conceived  by  his  followers 
a  very  different  being  from  Yahwe  as  worshipped  by  the 
Kenites  and  by  Moses.2  The  latter  was,  as  we  have  seen, 
a  god  of  fertility,  pleased  with  such  rites  as  similar  gods 
of  fertility  among  Semites  of  a  like  degree  of  civilization 
were  supposed  to  sanction.  He  was  less  gross  than  Baal 
only  because  the  nomadic  environment  imposed  greater 
simplicity  of  life  upon  his  followers.  Yahwe  as  conceived 
by  the  faithful  in  Israel  at  the  end  of  the  exile  was  the 
God  of  the  world,  just  and  righteous  himself,  and  satisfied 
with  nothing  less  in  his  followers.  The  conception  of 
him  then  held  needed  but  the  broadening  and  deepening 
which  was  to  come  in  part  through  the  contact  of  his 
followers  with  a  larger  world  in  the  succeeding  centuries, 
and  in  part  through  the  teaching  of  Jesus  Christ,  to  be- 
come the  ultimate  conception  of  God  for  the  ages,  —  meta- 
physically perfect,3  morally  perfect,4  religiously  perfect.5 

2.  In  this  transformation  of  Yahwe  the  absence  of 
written  religious  records  of  the  earlier  time  was  a  positive 
help.  If  there  were  written  tables  of  law  in  the  ark,  as 
we  have  seen,  they  probably  disappeared  in  the  time  of 

i  Budde,  Bel.  of  Israel,  p.  71  ff. 

a  If,  as  we  have  supposed,  Moses  conveyed  to  Israel  a  brief  summary  of 
ritual,  and  as  many  critics  have  also  supposed,  as  the  leader  of  Israel  he 
judged  causes  (or  brought  them  to  the  sacred  lot  of  Yahwe  for  adjudica- 
tion), it  would  be  most  natural  for  the  successive  legislation,  each  code  of 
•which  was  designed  by  its  promoters  to  revive  what  they  conceived  to  be 
primitive  Mosaism,  to  be  all  ascribed  to  him. 

»  "  God  is  Spirit,"  John  42*. 

4  "  God  is  light,"  1  John  I5.  Light  is  used  by  this  writer  as  equivalent 
to  moral  purity  ;  darkness  is  his  synonym  for  evil. 

6  "  God  is  love,"  1  John  48- 16.  Love  here  has  lost  its  old  Semitic  phys- 
ical meaning.  It  is  love  as  defined  in  1  Cor.  13. 


304  SEMITIC  ORIGINS 


Rehoboam.  The  whole  fate  of  the  ritual  and  the  concep- 
tion of  what  Yahwe  required  were  thereafter  committed 
to  tradition.  If  one  came  forward  from  Judah  claiming 
one  ideal  as  Mosaic,  Ephraim,  if  she  possessed  a  higher 
ideal,  could  claim  the  authority  of  her  own  traditions  as 
proof  of  the  Mosaic  authority  of  the  loftier  conception. 
When  the  Deuteronomic  law  was  afterward  found  in  the 
temple,  there  was  no  authoritative  written  bar  to  its  recep- 
tion, and  as  that  law  appealed  to  the  religious  conscious- 
ness of  the  prophets  of  the  time,1  it  too  could  be  freely 
adopted.  Thus  freedom  for  advance  without  unnecessary 
friction  was  afforded.  The  ghost  of  the  natural  Yahwe 
could  not  rise  to  successfully  contest  the  rights  of  the 
spiritual  Yahwe. 

3.  The  endeavor  of  the  prophets  to  gain  a  hearing  for 
their  spiritual  conceptions  of  God  and  their  ethical  con- 
ceptions of  life  were  greatly  aided  by  the  outward  events 
of  Israel's  history.     A  series  of  national  disasters,  result- 
ing in  the  overthrow  of  the  northern  kingdom  in  722  B.C. 
and  of  the  kingdom  of  Judah  in  586  B.C.,  gave  especial 
point  to  the  teachings  of  the  prophets.     The  better  minds 
among  the  people  were  thus  aroused  to  listen  and  obey ; 
while  the  obstinate  were  absorbed,  either  among  the  nations 
whither  they  were  carried  captive,  or  among  the  mongrel 
Samaritans  where  they  were  left. 

4.  It  should  be  borne  in  mind  that  the  prophetic  en- 
deavor of  those  centuries  did  not,  in  one  sense,  accom- 
plish the  ideal  which  at  the  beginning  (or  at  least  early 
in  the  conflict)  it  had  set  before  itself.      In  the  eighth 
century  it  had  high  hopes  of  sweeping  away  the  ritual 
altogether  ; 2  but  the  reaction  under  Manasseh  seems  to 
have  convinced  the  prophetic  leaders  that  the  time  was 
not  yet  ripe  for  trusting  their  spiritual  conceptions  to  the 
stormy  voyage  of  the  centuries,  unprotected  by  some  ark 
of  legal  forms.      The  Deuteronomic  law  was  then  formu- 
lated to  embody  the  new  conception  of  the  fundamental 

i  2  Kings  22*3  «.  «  Cf.  Amos  &*-«-*  ;  Hos.  6«  ;  Isa. 


YAH  WE  305 

~       7 

principles  of  Yahweism  in  a  practical  working  form.  In 
this  law  all  sanctuaries  but  one  were  abolished  ;  all  out- 
ward paraphernalia  which  might  tend  in  the  popular 
mind  to  associate  Yahwe  with  Baal,  or  even  with  the 
common  root  from  which  both  had  sprung,  were  rigidly 
excluded.  Ritual  there  was  to  be  sure,  but  ritual  robbed, 
in  so  far  as  it  could  be,  of  power  to  degrade  the  wor- 
shipper. Massebas  and  'asheras  were  swept  away,  and  all 
sexual  ritual  was  absolutely  prohibited.  In  the  adoption 
of  this  law,  however,  the  older  ideal  was  in  some  degree 
abandoned,  and  concession  made  to  practical  conditions. 
In  the  earlier  days  the  prophets  and  the  priesthood  —  at 
least  in  the  northern  kingdom  —  appear  in  strong  antago- 
nism to  one  another,  but  in  the  Deuteronomic  reform 
they  joined  hands.  A  little  later,  in  Jeremiah  and  Eze- 
kiel,  members  of  the  Levitical  and  priestly  circles  became 
prophets.  Ezekiel  proposed  for  the  post-exilic  days  a 
modification  of  the  Deuteronomic  law ;  others  of  the 
priestly  circles  followed  in  his  steps,  till  by  the  time  of 
Ezra  and  Nehemiah  the  earlier  prophetic  standards  were 
quite  reversed,  and  legal  morality  had  become  the  ideal  — 
instead  of  the  free,  spiritual  morality  of  the  earlier  prophets. 

This  change  seems  to  have  been  in  its  turn  providential. 
The  joyous  period,  when  the  inspiring  voice  of  contempo- 
rary faith  could  nerve  to  noble  endeavor,  had  passed 
away  ;  times  were  at  hand  which  would  try  men's  souls, 
—  times  when  an  objective  ritual  for  which  Israel  could 
struggle  was  a  necessity,  if  she  were  to  survive  for  the 
high  service  which  awaited  her.  This  ritual  was  codified 
and  accepted,  moreover,  at  a  time  when  the  prophetic 
ideals  of  Yahwe  had  deeply  penetrated  both  people  and 
priests,  so  that  the  new  Levitical  law,  though  compiled 
from  the  ancient  and  sometimes  superstitious l  usages  of 
the  old  local  sanctuaries,  was  so  purified  of  most  of  its 
dross  that  it  reflected  the  new  conception  of  God. 

The  outline  of  the  genesis  and  development  of  Yahwe 
1  Cf.  Nu.  611-21  and  the  sacrifice  to  Azazel  in  Lev.  16. 


306  SEMITIC   ORIGINS 


given  above  may  not  be  attested  by  evidence  sufficient  to 
commend  it  to  those  who  are  averse  to  critical  study,  or 
are  unaccustomed  to  the  reconstruction  of  the  origins  of 
civilization  by  the  restoration  to  their  original  environ- 
ment of  fossil  customs,  born  in  barbarism,  which  survive 
long  after  their  origin  is  forgotten.  The  evidence  is, 
however,  sufficient,  I  believe,  to  carry  weight  with  those 
who  have  some  familiarity  with  investigations  in  primi- 
tive religion  and  of  the  nature  of  the  evidence  which  we 
have  a  right  to  expect. 

The  results  which  our  discussions  have  reached  are  also 
most  reassuring  to  the  lover  of  the  Old  Testament. 
Nothing  could  show  more  conclusively  than  the  above  in- 
vestigation does  that  the  moral  standards  of  the  prophets 
and  their  conception  of  God  are  utterly  unaccounted  for 
by  their  environment.  The  tendency,  shared  by  the  an- 
cestors of  the  Hebrews  in  common  with  other  Semites,  to 
deify  the  functions  whereby  physical  life  was  produced, 
could  give  no  promise,  when  judged  by  the  fruits  it  pro- 
duced in  other  places,  of  the  rich  and  pure  ethical  and  re- 
ligious harvest  which  it  bore  in  Israel.  The  primitive 
conception  of  physical  fatherhood  became  after  Hosea1 
the  conception  of  a  moral  father  with  all  the  high  quali- 
ties of  an  unselfish  parent  raised  to  an  infinite  power. 
The  early  conception  of  a  deity  who  gloried  in  the  pro- 
cesses of  reproduction,  however  savagely  they  were  in- 
dulged in,  was  replaced  by  the  conception  of  Yahwe  as  a 
tender  and  affectionate  Husband  who  grieved  over  the  in- 
continent pollution  of  Israel,  the  bride  of  his  choice,  —  a 
Husband  whose  love  was  the  embodiment  of  all  purity, 
whose  rule  demanded  perfect  ethical  relations  between  his 
sons,  and  especially  between  his  sons  and  daughters.  If 
critical  study  makes  it  impossible  for  us  to  trace  the  birth 
of  these  conceptions  back  to  Abraham  or  Moses,  or  to  ac- 
count for  them  by  the  supposition  that  they  descended 
from  heaven  amidst  the  thunders  of  Sinai,  it  nevertheless 

1  Hos.  111. 


YAHWE  307 

emphasizes  their  real  inspiration,  for  it  demonstrates  on 
the  one  hand  that  they  first  took  their  shape  on  earth  in 
human  minds,  as  all  spiritual  conceptions  must,  and  on 
the  other  that  there  was  nothing  in  their  physical  and 
social  environment  which  adequately  explains  them, — 
that,  after  all,  the  inspiring  touch  of  these  prophetic  hearts 
by  the  divine  Spirit  is  their  only  real  explanation.  We 
go  back  to  the  rise  of  Semitic  life,  we  test  its  nature  at 
the  root,  we  trace  its  many-branched  trunk  through  the 
various  civilizations ;  but  we  find  in  none  of  them  except 
this  little  Hebrew  branch1  any  potency  or  promise  of 
spiritual  flower  or  ethical  fruit  so  rich  and  fair  ;  we  trace 
the  outward  events  of  the  appearance  and  growth  of  this 
little  branch,  we  find  here  a  favorable  condition,  there  a 
providential  adversity,  but  none  of  these  fully  account 
for  the  beauty  of  the  branch  or  the  purity  of  its  flower 
and  fruit.  Nothing  approaching  it  in  sublimity2  has 
without  its  help  been  produced  in  other  parts  of  the 
world.  We  are  compelled  at  the  end  of  our  study  to  con- 
fess that  "men  from  God  spake,  being  moved  by  the 
Holy  Spirit."3 

It  must  be  remembered,  however,  that  it  is  not  as 
strange  as  it  might  at  first  appear  to  be,  that  such  spir- 
itual conceptions  should  have  been  grafted  upon  the 
Semitic  stock,  which  has  often  seemed  so  sensual ;  for  as 
was  pointed  out  above,*  recent  investigation  is  opening 
our  eyes  to  the  fact  that  the  religious  and  moral  develop- 
ment of  the  race  has  been  closely  bound  up  with  father- 
hood and  motherhood,  and  that  the  periods  of  religious 

1  I  do  not  forget  the  good  points  of  Mohammedanism,  but  Mohammed 
was  clearly  indebted  to  Judaism  and  Christianity  for  much  of  his  con- 
ception of  God. 

2  Single  thinkers  in  Egypt,  Greece,  India,  and  China  may  have  reached 
thoughts  similar  to  these,  but  the  sublimity  which  appears  in  Israel  is 
that  of  a  practical  monotheism  accepted  by  the  whole  nation,  —  men, 
women,  and  children  ;  the  loftiest  thoughts  of  God  applied  to  daily  duties 
by  all. 

«  2  Pet.  I21.  *  See  above,  p.  107. 


308  SEMITIC  ORIGINS 


growth  in  the  individual  coincide  with  the  periods  of 
physical  preparation  for  these  functions.  Religious  prog- 
ress has  always  been  most  marked  where  the  rational 
and  mystical  elements  appear  in  the  happiest  combination. 
\yhere  the  rational  element  predominates,  religion  be- 
pomes  a  cold  formality ;  where  the  mystical  is  in  excess, 
it  becomes  fanciful  and  extravagant,  losing  real  touch 
with  life.  But  the  mystical  has  always  delighted  to 
express  itself  in  terms  of  spiritual  matrimony,  and  is  the 
purified  form  of  that  which  the  early  Semites  far  back  in 
the  evolution  of  civilization  so  grossly  expressed.1  With 
all  its  excesses,  therefore,  we  must  consider  the  widespread 
Semitic  cult  as  the  preparation  of  a  religious  soil,  in  which 
the  lofty  conceptions  of  God  and  duty,  which  appear  so 
unique  in  Israel,  could  take  root  and  produce  their  fruit. 

1  See  the  paper  of  de  la  Grassarie,  read  in  1900  at  the  Paris  Congress 
of  Religion.     Cf.  Revue  de  Vhistoire  de  religion,  Vol.  XLII,  p.  168. 


CHAPTER  VIII 

BBIEF  ESTIMATE  OF  SEMITIC   SOCIAL  AND  RELIGIOUS 
INFLUENCE  ON  THE    NON-SEMITIC   WORLD 

WE  have  now  concluded  our  brief  survey  of  the  birth  of 
Semitic  social  and  religious  life,  and  its  various  develop- 
ments among  the  Semitic  peoples.  Before  concluding  this 
imperfect  sketch,  it  will  be  helpful  to  briefly  indicate  the 
various  points  at  which  the  institutions  studied  in  the  pre- 
ceding pages  have  touched  and  influenced  the  non-Semitic 
world.  No  extended  discussion  can  be  attempted  here  ; 
we  shall  content  ourselves  with  indicating  what  the  influ- 
ences have  been,  and  the  points  at  which  they  have  been 
felt.  To  attempt  to  follow  them  out  in  detail  would  re- 
quire the  services  of  many  specialists  in  several  different 
fields ;  but  to  ignore  them  entirely  would  leave  upon  the 
reader  an  unjust  estimate  of  the  value  of  the  institu- 
tions we  have  been  studying  as  contributors  to  modern 
civilization. 

From  institutions  such  as  these  it  is  obvious  that  two 
circles  of  influence  would  radiate.  From  the  barbarous 
Semitic  institutions,  perpetuated  by  religious  conservatism 
far  into  a  succeeding  and  higher  civilization,  corrupting 
and  disintegrating  influences  would  surely  radiate.  From 
the  lofty  and  austere  morality  of  the  Hebrews  of  later 
times,  from  the  lofty  spiritual  vision  of  the  prophets,  there 
have  come,  on  the  other  hand,  some  of  the  best  elements  of 
subsequent  civilization. 

In  attempting  this  brief  estimate,  we  shall,  for  obvious 
reasons,  confine  our  attention  mainly  to  the  world  which 
lay  west  of  the  Semitic  territory.  The  Semites  of  the 

309 


310  SEMITIC   ORIGINS 


ancient  Babylonian  kingdom  of  Kish  must,  through  their 
colonies  in  Elam,1  have  exerted  an  important  influence 
upon  the  kingdom  of  Elam  and  upon  all  the  neighboring 
states  which  Elam  could  influence  ;  but  until  more  of  the 
inscriptions  of  Elam  have  been  discovered  and  we  are  able 
to  read  the  Elamitic  language,2  we  cannot  even  reconstruct 
the  Elamitic  civilization,  much  less  tell  the  influences  which 
moulded  it. 

Similarly  we  might  inquire  whether  after  the  time  of 
Cyrus  the  institutions  of  the  Persian  conquerors  of  Baby- 
lon were  affected  by  their  contact  with  the  older  Semitic 
civilization,  but  no  very  positive  results  can  at  present  be 
obtained.  Cyrus  himself  speaks,  in  his  well-known  cylin- 
der inscription,3  as  though  he  had  become  a  worshipper  of 
Babylonian  gods,  or  at  least  of  Marduk,  but  it  is  probable 
that  in  this  respect  he  was  simply  a  statesman  who,  as  a 
matter  of  fact,  kept  his  own  native  creed.4  At  all  events, 
his  immediate  successors  appear  by  their  religious  expres- 
sions6 to  be  practically  untouched  by  Semitic  influences, 
and  to  have  maintained  the  worship  of  Ahuramazda  in  toler- 
able purity.  Whether  Babylonian  architecture  influenced 
Persian  architecture,  or  the  Babylonian  religious  hymns 
the  later  Persian  religious  literature,  are  problems  for  the 
Iranian  scholar  rather  than  the  present  writer.  They 
would  not,  even  if  we  had  their  solution,  give  much  help 
in  the  pursuit  of  the  influences  we  are  now  trying  to  trace. 

If  now  we  turn  to  the  other  extremity  of  the  Babylo- 
nian and  Assyrian  world,  we  come  upon  a  territory  where 
our  problem,  though  far  from  soluble,  presents  us,  even  in 

1  Cf.  Delegation  en  Perse.  Memoires  publies  sous  la  direction  de  M.  J. 
de  Morgan,  Tom.  II,  Textes  elamites-semitiques,  par  V.  Scheil,  Paris,  1900. 

2  For  an  attempt  to  read  certain  Elamitic  words,  cf.  Jensen's  "  Alt- 
und  Neuelamitisches  "  in  ZDMG.,  Vol.  LV  (1901),  p.  223  ff. 

8  KB.,  Vol.  IIP,  p.  120  ff. 

4  Cf.  Gray  in  JA  OS.,  Vol.  XXI2,  p.  179. 

6  Cf.  Bezold's  Achimeniden  Inschriften  ;  Assyrian  and  Babylonian 
Literature,  Aldine  ed.,  N.  Y.,  1901,  pp.  171-194,  and  Jackson  in  JAOS., 
Vol.  XXI2,  p.  160  ff. 


SEMITIC  SOCIAL  AND  RELIGIOUS  INFLUENCE         311 

the  imperfect  state  of  our  present  knowledge,  with  an  an- 
swer which,  though  somewhat  dim  in  outline,  is  probably 
in  general  correct.  A  group  of  contract  tablets  from  Cap- 
padocia,  in  the  eastern  part  of  Asia  Minor,  written  some- 
where between  1300  and  1100  B.C.,1  attest  the  presence  of 
a  strong  Assyrian  influence  in  this  part  of  Asia  Minor  at 
that  period.  These  tablets  contain  proper  names  into 
which  the  names  of  the  deities  Assur  and  Ishtar  enter  as 
compounds,  and  make  it  probable  that  the  Assyrian  reli- 
gion, as  well  as  Assyrian  culture,  made  itself  felt  in  this 
region  at  that  time.2  It  is  hardly  probable  that  the  wave 
of  Semitic  migration  represented  by  these  tablets  stands 
alone.  If  the  Assyrians  had  not  penetrated  into  this  re- 
gion at  an  earlier  time  than  that  just  indicated,  it  is  prob- 
able that  the  Aramaeans  had  done  so.  At  least,  a  little 
later  their  influence,  Jensen  thinks,  can  be  distinctly 
traced.3  Thus  they  had  given  the  region  a  touch  of  Se- 
mitic influence.  How  far  Semitic  influences  coming  in 
this  way  penetrated  the  life  and  moulded  the  institutions 
of  the  country,  it  is  impossible  now  to  say.  It  was  evidently 
considerable.  A  little  later,  and  possibly  at  the  time  of 
which  we  speak,  Cilicia  and  the  regions  to  the  westward 
seem  to  have  been  occupied  by  the  Hittites,  whose  monu- 
ments indicate  that  they  penetrated  to  the  neighborhood 
of  Cappadocia.4  Hittite  monuments  are  found  in  many 
parts  of  Asia  Minor,  and  Hittite  civilization  must  have 
penetrated  the  country  deeply.6  Not  until  the  Hittite 
inscriptions  are  deciphered  can  we  justly  estimate  how  far 
Hittite  civilization  has  been  influenced  by  Semitic. 

Jensen,  who  has  struck  out  a  new  path  for  the  decipher- 
ment of  Hittite  and  has  probably  rightly  identified  some 

1  Cf.  Peiser  in  KB.,  Vol.  IV,  p.  viii. 

2  For  the  contents  of  some  of  them  cf.  KB.,  Vol.  IV,  pp.  50-57. 
8  Hittiter  und  Armenier,  pp.  170-177. 

*  See  Messerschmidt's  "  Corpus  Inscriptionum  Hettiticarum,"  in  the 
Mitteilungen  der  vorderasiatischen  Gresellschaft,  1900,  I,  p.  21,  and  II, 
Tafeln  XXVII,  XXVIII,  and  XXIX. 

6  See  the  work  of  Messerschmidt  just  cited,  passim. 


312  SEMITIC  ORIGINS 


of  the  signs,1  has  shown  that  these  inscriptions  probably 
date  from  1200  to  800  B.C.  While  it  is  probable  that  the 
Hittites  were  in  this  region  considerably  earlier  than  the 
time  when  their  written  monuments  begin,  it  is  also  prob- 
able that  they  had  felt  the  influence  of  the  Semitic  contact 
long  before  Tiglath-pileser  I  encountered  them  about 
1100  B.C.  in  the  region  of  Carchemish.2  Probability  re- 
ceives in  this  case  some  slight  confirmation  from  other 
sources.  Some  of  the  specimens  of  their  art,  like  the 
statue,  discovered  by  Koldeway,3  of  the  weather  god,  shows 
positive  evidence  of  the  influence  of  Babylonian  and  Assyr- 
ian art.4 

It  is  not  certain,  however,  that  Hittite  civilization  was 
altogether  dissimilar  to  the  Semitic.  It  is  true  that  many 
scholars  have  regarded  the  Hittites  as  belonging  to  the 
Turanian  or  Mongolian  family  of  peoples,5  while  Jensen 
believes  them  to  be  Aryans,6  and  the  ancestors  of  the 
modern  Armenians.  Jensen's  arguments  on  this  point 
are,  however,  too  slender  to  be  convincing.  Jensen  him- 
self has  pointed  out  that  many  of  their  characters  re- 
semble in  certain  characteristics7  Egyptian  hieroglyphs, 
while  Jastrow  claims  that  many  of  their  proper  names 
found  in  Assyrian  and  Egyptian  inscriptions  are  of  the 
Semitic  type.8  Sergi,9  from  anthropological  evidence,  be- 

1  In  two  articles  in  ZDMG. ,  Vol.  XLVIII,  and  his  Hittiter  und  Arme- 
nier,  1898.     For  dates  see  the  latter  work,  pp.  189-216. 

2  KB.,  Vol.  I,  p.  33. 

8  Cf.  Messerschmidt,  op.  cit.,  Tafel  I,  Nos.  5,  6. 

4  Possibly  too  at  a  later  time  Semitic  influences  directly  from  Arabia 
were  felt  here.  Ramsay  (Cities  and  Bishoprics  of  Phrygia,  p.  91,  n.  2) 
inclines  to  accept  a  suggestion  of  Robertson  Smith's  that  Leto,  the  name 
of  a  goddess  of  this  region,  is  a  corruption  of  Al-Lat. 

6  Cf.  Wright,  The  Empire  of  the  Hittites;  Sayce,  Races  of  the  Old  Tes- 
tament ;  Conder,  The  Hittites. 

8  Op.  cit.  7  Cf.  Hittiter  und  Armenier,  p.  63. 

8  Cf.  his  article  "  Hittites,"  §  12,  in  Encycl.  Bib.    The  point  is  of  com- 
paratively small  value  because  the  inscriptions  use  the  term  Hittite  so 
loosely  that  they  frequently  refer  to  Semites  under  this  name.    Thus  Sar- 
gon  (KB.,  Vol.  II,  p.  57)  calls  an  Aramaean  king  of  Hamath  a  Hittite. 

9  Mediterranean  Race,  p.  144. 


SEMITIC   SOCIAL  AND  RELIGIOUS  INFLUENCE         313 

lieves  that  the  Hittites  were  an  African  race  of  the  same 
stock  as  the  Libyans  or  Berbers,  and  that  all  Asia  Minor 
was  peopled  by  this  same  stock,  which  he  believes  were 
one  in  race  with  the  Pelasgians.  In  the  midst  of  so  many 
conflicting  views  one  cannot  hold  any  positive  opinion 
with  reference  to  the  origin  of  the  Hittites,  though  it  may 
be  pardonable  to  take  the  opinion  of  Sergi  as  a  working 
hypothesis.  If  they  are  a  branch  of  the  great  North 
African  race,  it  is  quite  possible  that  the  same  oasis  influ- 
ence which  produced  the  Egyptian  Isis  and  the  Semitic 
Ishtar  may  have  given  them  a  similar  goddess.  At  all 
events,  whether  from  native  Hittite  conceptions,  or  Se- 
mitic influences,  or  from  both,1  the  Hittites  possessed  such 
a  goddess.2  The  evidence  of  this  comes  not  only  from  their 
monuments,  but  from  the  evidences  of  their  influence  on 
Asia  Minor.  Hittite  civilization  spread  over  all  Asia 
Minor,3  and  it  is  altogether  probable  that  the  Phrygian 
goddess,  known  variously  as  Rhea,  Attis,  Cybele,*  Leto, 
and  Artemis,  is  but  a  later  form  of  this  Hittite  divinity, 
who,  whatever  her  home-born  inheritance  may  have  been, 
probably  had  a  considerable  element  of  Semitic  conception 
about  her.  She  dates  from  a  time  when  the  inhabitants 
of  the  country  were  totemistic  and  lived  in  caves,  as  many 
of  her  shrines  were  grottos.5  That  this  goddess  was  in 
nature  the  same  as  Ashtart  is  clear  from  the  fact  that  she 
was  an  earth  goddess  of  fertility  and  love,  that  a  feast  was 
celebrated  to  her  at  the  time  of  the  vernal  equinox,  that 
the  swine  was  sacred  to  her,  that  ceremonies  practically 
identical  with  the  Tammuz  wailing  were  yearly  celebrated 


1  Cults  of  similar  nature  would  assimilate  the  more  readily. 

a  Cf .  Jensen,  Hittiter  und  Armenier,  pp.  157  ft.,  166  ff.,  and  Messer- 
schinidt,  op.  cit.,  Tafel  XXVII,  B. 

8  Cf.  Jastrow,  "  Hittites,"  §  11,  in  Encyc.  Bib.,  and  the  evidence  of  the 
widely  scattered  inscriptions  in  Messerschmidt,  op.  cit. 

*  Cf.  Strabo,  X,  3,  12. 

6  Cf.  Pausanias,  X,  32,  3,  and  Ramsay,  Cities  and  Bishoprics  ofPhrygia, 
pp.  89  ff.,  138  ff. 


314  SEMITIC  ORIGINS 


to  her,1  and  that  she  is  often  described  by  Greek  writers 
as  androgynous,2  as  we  have  seen  the  Semitic  goddess  in 
various  places  to  be,3  and  that  like  the  Semitic  goddess,  a 
god  is  in  many  places  represented  as  her  son.4  The  an- 
drogynous character  indicates  what  we  also  learn  elsewhere, 
that  this  goddess  of  Asia  Minor,  like  the  great  Semitic 
deity,  had  a  long  career  as  a  goddess  in  a  matriarchal  com- 
munity,6 before  the  changing  conditions  of  civilization 
transformed  her  in  some  places  to  a  male,6  and  that  at 
some  points  religious  sentiment  crystallized  (or  was  em- 
balmed in  literature)  while  popular  conceptions  were  in  a 
confused  state  with  reference  to  her  sex.  This  cult  as  has 
been  said,  was  widely  disseminated  in  Asia  Minor.7 

While  we  cannot  claim  that  this  cult  in  Asia  Minor  was 
solely  of  Semitic  origin,  it  is  probable  that  it  was  not  only 
of  kindred  origin,  but  also  deeply  penetrated  by  Semitic 
influences.  The  cult  of  Aphrodite- JEneas,  which  flourished 
in  the  Troad,  was,  as  Farnell  has  pointed  out,8  an  offshoot 
of  the  cult  of  this  old  Phrygian- Hittite  goddess.  Much 
obscurity  attaches  to  the  person  of  J2neas,  but  Farnell's 
conjecture 9  that  he  was  the  mythical  founder  of  a  house 
of  priestly  kings  who  maintained  the  worship  of  the  god- 
dess seems  the  most  satisfactory  explanation  of  it.  The 

1  Cf.  Baudessin,  Studien  zur  semitischen  Religionsgeschichte,  Vol.  II, 
pp.  188  and  203-207  ;  also  P.  Decharme's  article  "  Cybele,"  in  Darmberge 
and  Saglio's  Diet,  des  ant.  grec.  et  rom.,  p.  1682. 

3  Cf.  Pindar,  Pyth.,  II,  127 ;  Pausanias,  VII,  17,  10  ;  and  Lucian,  de 
Syria  Dea,  §  15. 

«  Cf.  above,  pp.  148  ff.,  181  ff.,  244,  and  254  ;  also  JAOS.,  Vol.  XXF, 
p.  185  ff. 

*  Cf.  Ramsay,  Cities  and  Bishoprics  of  Phrygia,  pp.  130  ff.,  133  ff., 
167  ff.,  169  ff. 

6  Cf.  Ramsay,  op  cit.,  pp.  7  ff.  and  94  ff. 

«  Cf.  Ramsay,  op  cit.,  pp.  7  ff.,  62  ff.,  167  ff. 

7  In  addition  to  references  given  above  cf.  Herodotus,  V,  102,  Pausanias, 
III,  22,  4  ;  Messerschmidt,  op  cit.,  I,  p.  33  ;  and  Ramsay's  Cities  and  Bish- 
oprics of  Phrygia,  pp.  51  ff.,  89  ff.,  130  ff.,  133  ff.,  138  ff.     For  Artemis 
at  Ephesus,  cf .  Acts  19. 

8  Cults  of  the  Greek  States,  p.  641. 

9  Ibid.,  p.  638.     Cf.  Strabo,  XIII,  1,  63. 


SEMITIC   SOCIAL  AND  RELIGIOUS  INFLUENCE         315 

myths  of  the  wanderings  of  JSneas  are  the  story  of  the 
diffusion  of  this  cult.1  By  means  of  these  myths  we  may 
trace  it  to  Thrace,  to  Zacynthos,  to  Buthrotum,  to  the 
southeast  coast  of  Italy,  and  to  Eryx  in  the  Island  of  Sic- 
ily,2 where  it  met  and  mingled  with  waves  of  influence 
direct  from  Phoanicia.3  On  the  way  to  these  points  it  had 
planted  itself  in  southern  Laconia,4  Arcadia,5  and  Argos.6 
All  forms  of  the  myth,  however,  represent  the  goal  of 
jEneas  as  Italy,  and  it  is  certain  that  the  cult  was  estab- 
lished at  various  points  along  the  Italian  shore  of  the  Adri- 
atic,7 at  Naples,8  and  also  at  Rome.9  At  the  latter  city  it 
seems  to  have  been  unknown  in  the  days  of  the  kings,  but 
was  afterward  introduced  from  the  South.  In  later  times 
it  became  a  powerful  influence,  reenforced  as  it  was  by  more 
recently  imported  influences  from  the  East,  for  the  cor- 
ruption of  Roman  society  and  the  destruction  of  the  aus- 
tere morals  of  the  earlier  Roman  period. 

From  Phoenicia  waves  of  migration  to  the  westward 
began  at  an  early  date,  —  probably  by  1400  B.C.  or  earlier, 
—  and  wherever  the  emigrants  went,  they  carried  with 
them  the  cult  of  their  native  goddess.  We  have  already 
followed  in  part  their  course  through  the  islands  of  the 
Mediterranean,10  but  they  also  made  their  way  to  the  main- 
land of  Greece,  where  settlements  were  made  at  several 
points,  and  Phoenician  influence  was  accordingly  a  factor 
in  the  resulting  religion  and  mythology.11  Thus  in  Greece 
two  waves  of  this  cult  met  and  mingled,  one  from  Asia 
Minor  and  the  region  of  Semitized  Hittite  influence,  and 

1  Cf.  the  references  in  Farnell,  op  cit.,  p.  737  ff.   I  am  indebted  to  this 
work  for  a  number  of  the  references  given  below. 

2  For  these  places  cf.  Dion.  Halic.,  I,  39-60. 

»  See  above,  p.  252  ff.  '  Catullus,  XXXVI,  11. 

«  Pausanias,  III,  22,  11.  »  <7.  /.  Gr.,  No.  6796. 

«  Ibid.,  VIII,  12,  9.  «  Strabo,  V,  2,  6. 

•  Ibid.,  II,  21,  1.  »  Above,  p.  252  ff. 

11  Cf.  Farnell,  op.  cit.,  p.  618  ff.,  especially,  p.  624  ;  Robert  Brown,  Jr., 
Semitic  Influence  in  Hellenic  Mythology  ;  and  Dyer,  The  Gods  of  Greece, 
pp.  163-173. 


316  SEMITIC  ORIGINS 


the  other  from  Semitic  Phoenicia.  One  of  the  places 
where  Phoenician  influence  was  most  directly  felt  was  at 
Thebes,  in  Boeotia.  The  Phoenician  influence  is  not  only 
attested  by  the  name,  Kadmos,1  but  Herodotus  was  ac- 
quainted with  a  tradition  that  Kadmos  was  a  Tyrian.2 
The  traditional  origin  of  this  worship  at  Thebes  is  con- 
firmed by  the  functions  of  the  Aphrodite  worshipped 
there.  She  was  a  goddess  of  fertility,  who  presided  over 
the  relations  of  the  sexes  to  one  another,  and  was  also 
regarded  as  the  mother  of  Adonis,  the  wailing  for  whom 
formed  a  part  of  her  ritual.3 

The  cult  which  thus  penetrated  Greece  from  two  direc- 
tions was  spread  pretty  generally  over  it.4  That  it  was 
not  native  to  the  Greeks  is  very  clear.5  Perhaps  the  cult 
found  its  way  into  Greece  at  a  time  before  the  develop- 
ment of  wealth  and  luxury  in  Hittite  and  Semitic  lands 
had  removed  from  its  peculiar  rites  the  simple  innocence 
of  early  days ;  or  perhaps  early  Greek  morals  were  too 
pure  to  be  seriously  corrupted  by  these  streams  from 
abroad.  However  this  may  be,  if  Farnell  is  to  be  be- 
lieved,6 Aphrodite  in  the  early  years  of  Greek  history  was 
little  more  than  the  personification  of  the  power  of  fertility 
and  love  in  life,  and  neither  moral  nor  immoral.  In  later 
times  —  after  the  fourth  century  B.C.  —  this  was  consid- 
erably changed.  The  influence  of  the  hetaerse  spread  in 
social  life ;  national  pride  sank,  and  the  temples  of  Aphro- 
dite, as  the  restraints  of  the  earlier  time  were  thrown 
aside,  became  more  and  more  what  they  had  been  in 
Phoenician  cities  like  Tyre  and  Sidon,  and  from  many 
centres  debased  Greek  life. 

By  the  beginning  of  the  Christian  era,  then,  this  cult, 
which  in  one  way  or  another  had  come  to  be  widely  scat- 
tered in  the  Mediterranean  countries,  had  produced  in 
the  society  of  the  Roman  Empire,  especially  in  the  eastern 

1  From  dip,  "the  east."        2  Bk.  II,  49.        «  Pausanias,  IX,  16,  3. 

*  Farnell,  Cults  of  the  Greek  States,  p.  618  ff. 

•  Farnell,  ibid.,  p.  619  ff.  «  Ibid.,  p.  664  ff. 


SEMITIC  SOCIAL  AND  RELIGIOUS  INFLUENCE         317 

portion  of  it,  a  condition  of  social  and  domestic  laxity 
analogous  to  that  in  ancient  Israel  against  which  Elijah 
and  his  successors  had  protested.  At  Corinth,  for  ex- 
ample, the  sensuality  so  strongly  rebuked  by  the  apostle 
Paul 1  is  directly  traceable  to  the  corrupting  influences  of 
the  temple  of  Aphrodite  which  overlooked  the  city.2  The 
corruption  thus  produced  by  the  religious  sanction,  which 
was  thrown  over  practices  which  were  no  longer  naif  and 
innocent,  must  be  set  down  to  the  disadvantage  of  the  old 
Semitic  cult.  To  that  extent  it  is  chargeable  for  human 
degradation. 

Out  of  the  society  of  these  times  there  came,  however, 
an  institution  for  the  birth  of  which  the  laxity  in  social 
life,  produced  by  the  worship  described  above,  is  in  large 
part  responsible,  concerning  which  different  individuals 
will  make  widely  different  estimates.  Whether  monasti- 
cism  —  for  it  is  this  to  which  I  refer  —  has  been  on  the 
whole  a  blessing  to  the  world  depends  upon  the  point 
of  view  from  which  one  looks  at  it.  No  doubt  there 
were  many  forces  at  work  in  the  society  and  theology  of 
the  early  Church  to  produce  that  exaltation  of  virginity 
and  celibacy  in  the  first  century  which  culminated  in  the 
formation  of  the  monastic  orders  of  the  fourth  and  subse- 
quent centuries;3  but  one  of  those  forces — and  one  which, 
I  am  convinced,  was  more  potent  than  has  often  been 
supposed  —  was  a  reaction  from  that  sensuality,  conse- 
crated under  the  name  of  religion,  which  was  destroying 
the  society  of  the  civilized  world.  It  is  little  wonder  that 
for  a  time  earnest  souls  should  almost  couple  the  matri- 
monial state,  even  in  its  purity,  with  heathenism,  and 
extol  celibacy  as  the  only  pure  and  Christian  life. 

1  1  Cor.  5,  0.  *  Pausanias,  II,  5,  1. 

•  Cf.  Kirchengeschichte,  von  K.  Miiller,  Vol.  I,  pp.  208-2 16,  Monasticism, 
its  Ideals  and  History,  by  Adolf  Harnach.  translated  by  C.  R.  Gillett, 
N.Y.,  1895,  pp.  5-44,  The  Monastic  Life,  by  T.  N.  Allies,  London,  1896, 
chs.  i-iii,  Christian  Monasticism,  by  I.  G.  Smith,  London,  1892,  ch.  v, 
Monasticism,  Ancient  and  Modern,  by  F.  C.  Woodhouse,  London,  1896, 
chs.  i,  ii,  and  Schaff's  History  of  the  Christian  Church,  Vol.  Ill,  p.  158  ff. 


318  SEMITIC  ORIGINS 


Doubtless  in  the  centuries  which  have  since  elapsed 
other  causes  have  perpetuated  the  monastic  orders.  As  a 
means  of  consecrating  life  to  contemplation  and  service 
they  have  appealed  to  ardent  individuals ;  because  armies 
of  men  and  women,  thus  unencumbered  by  the  ordinary 
ties  of  domestic  life,  have  been  useful  to  the  rulers  of  the 
church  for  the  accomplishment  of  their  various  ends,  they 
have  appealed  to  the  hierarchy ;  but  in  them  we  have  with 
us  to  the  present  hour  an  institution  which  is,  in  part  at 
least,  a  monument  to  the  reaction  from  the  influences  for 
evil  of  the  worst  elements  of  the  old  Semitic  cult. 

In  the  last  analysis,  however,  the  powers  for  good  which 
the  world  has  derived  from  Semitic  influence  outweigh 
those  which  have  made  for  evil.  We  should  never  forget 
that  the  three  great  monotheistic  religions  of  the  world, 
Judaism,  Christianity,  and  Mohammedanism,  have  all 
sprung  from  the  religious  soil  which  was  prepared  by  the 
primitive  cult,  the  origin  and  history  of  which  we  have 
been  tracing. 

The  rise  in  Israel  of  the  sublime  conceptions  of  God  and 
duty  which  created  Judaism  we  have  already  sketched,1 
but  we  have  not  hitherto  noted  the  beneficent  influence 
which  Judaism  exerted,  in  the  centuries  immediately 
preceding  the  beginning  of  our  era,  upon  the  Grseco- 
Roman  world.  Dispersed  as  the  Jews  had  been  after  the 
time  of  Alexander  the  Great,  by  contact  with  the  world 
their  conception  of  their  mission  was  greatly  broadened 
and  exalted.  Formerly  they  had  thought  that  for  the 
sake  of  themselves  alone  they  were  the  favorites  of  heaven; 
now  they  regarded  themselves  as  divinely  sent  missionaries 
to  the  world.  A  propaganda  was  accordingly  inaugurated, 
equipped  with  an  extensive  literature,2  to  win  the  world 
to  Judaism.  At  the  time  old  national  faiths  were  worn 

1  Above,  pp.  300-305. 

2  Cf.  Schiirer's  History  of  the  Jewish  People  in  the  Time  of  Jesus 
Christ,  Div.  II,  Vol.  II,  p.  220  fi.     For  a  briefer  sketch,  Thatcher's 
Apostolic  Church,  ch.  ii. 


SEMITIC   SOCIAL  AND   RELIGIOUS  INFLUENCE         319 

out ;  philosophy  had  taught  many  the  irrationality  of 
former  cults  ;  the  moral  sense  of  numbers  was  turning  in 
disgust  from  social  corruption  protected  tinder  the  name 
of  religion.  To  these  Judaism,  with  its  lofty  conception 
of  God  and  its  austere  morals,  came  as  a  refuge  and  an  in- 
spiration, and  at  this  distance  we  can  only  guess  at  its 
power  for  good  ;  it  must  have  been  immense. 

Judaism  had,  nevertheless,  its  limitations;  it  was  after 
all  a  national  faith.  Men  could  obtain  its  benefits  only  by 
becoming  by  adoption  members  of  the  Jewish  race ;  there- 
fore, soon  after  the  beginning  of  our  era,  Christianity 
easily  succeeded  to  its  mission.  The  old  Semitic  cult  had 
prepared  the  soil  for  Judaism  ;  both  had  prepared  the  soil 
for  the  teaching  of  Jesus  Christ.  The  matchless  figure 
of  the  Master  is  much  less  explained  by  his  environment 
than  the  monotheism  of  the  Old  Testament  prophets ;  and 
yet  it  was  no  accident  that  the  seed  of  his  teaching  was 
sown  on  a  warm,  religious,  Semitic  soil.  Nowhere  else  in 
the  world  had  such  a  soil  been  so  remarkably  prepared. 
Christianity,  freed  through  the  labors  of  Paul  and  such  as 
he  from  the  trammels  of  Jewish  particularism,  with  the 
prophetic  idea  of  God  completed  and  perfected,  with  its 
consciousness  of  human  brotherhood  and  the  absolute 
worth  of  every  individual,  went  forth  to  conquer,  leaven,1 
and  renovate  the  ancient  world.  Such  is  the  imperfection 
of  human  nature  that  no  ideals,  when  embodied  in  human 
institutions,  are  always  perfectly  expressed  or  altogether 
unmingled  with  baser  metal.  It  has  therefore  happened 
to  Christianity,  as  to  every  other  religion,  that  much  that 
should  never  have  been  connected  with  the  name  of 
religion  at  all  has  masqueraded  under  its  garb.  Not- 
withstanding this,  the  religion  of  Jesus  Christ  has  exerted 
influences  for  the  moral  and  spiritual  elevation  of  the 
world  such  as  have  radiated  from  no  other  centre,  and 
which  are  simply  immeasurable.  It  is  the  religion  of  the 

1  See  e.g.  the  beautiful  description  of  the  effects  of  early  Christianity 
in  the  Epistle  to  Diognetus,  ch.  v. 


320  SEMITIC  ORIGINS 


best  civilization;  it  is  capable  of  becoming  the  religion 
of  mankind  ;  its  dross  is  not  inherent  in  it  and  may  be 
purged  away  ;  its  spirit,  its  ethics,  and  its  ideals  are  the 
hope  of  the  world.  Yet  Christianity,  with  all  that  it  has 
been,  is,  and  promises  to  be,  traces  its  ancestry  "according 
to  the  flesh  "  back  to  the  primitive  Semitic  cult. 

Mohammedanism  must  not  be  omitted  from  this  esti- 
mate. Though  born  later  than  Christianity,  and  deriving 
its  monotheism  from  the  same  source,  its  birth  in  the  Ara- 
bian peninsula,  where  civilization  had  reached  a  less  ele- 
vated plane,  placed  it  at  a  great  disadvantage,  if  judged 
from  the  point  of  view  of  an  ethical  civilization.  Its 
prophet  during  the  earlier  years  of  his  career  was  earnest 
and  sincere,  and  the  recipient  of  a  genuine  inspiration  ; 
but  in  later  life  he  departed  from  this  lofty  plane,  and 
lived  for  ends  which  were  not  entirely  unselfish  and  are 
not  above  the  suspicion  of  sensuality.  Its  book,  the 
Qur'an,  legislates  on  the  plane  of  the  simple  and  half- 
barbarous  life  of  the  Arabian  desert  for  the  civil  and 
religious  polity  of  the  world  for  all  time. 

No  doubt  Mohammedanism  has  in  many  parts  exerted 
an  influence  for  good.  Where  its  sway  has  extended 
over  races  of  a  lower  order  of  civilization  than  that  of 
Arabia,  it  has  tended  to  elevate  them ;  but  it  stunts  and 
blasts  higher  civilizations  wherever  it  comes  in  contact 
with  them.  Perhaps  when  at  its  best,  in  the  Middle  Ages, 
it  was  nearly  on  a  par  with  the  Christianity  it  opposed ; 
but  when  its  best  products  in  the  way  of  civilization 
to-day  are  placed  by  the  best  products  of  Christian  civili- 
zation, the  verdict  of  superiority  does  not  fall  in  favor  of 
Mohammedanism.  Traditions  have  done  much  to  modify 
the  application  of  the  teachings  of  its  sacred  book  ;  differ- 
ences of  temperament  and  casuistry  have  produced  almost 
as  many  sects  and  varieties  of  thought  as  those  which 
have  sought  to  express  Christianity,  varying  from  the  lit- 
eralism of  the  Wahabites  to  the  mysticism  of  the  Fati- 
mites  and  the  Persian  sects,  but  wherever  it  is  found  its 


SEMITIC   SOCIAL  AND  RELIGIOUS  INFLUENCE         321 

spirit  and  ideals  fall  so  far  short  of  the  highest  that  the 
best  civilization  seems  impossible  under  its  rule.  Its  evil 
and  its  good  alike  possess  elements  in  common  with  all 
human  good  and  all  human  imperfection,  but  it  has  some 
imperfections  which  are  peculiarly  Semitic.  It  is  a  crude 
product  of  the  Semitic  religious  soil ;  it  is  not  wanting  in 
noble  elements,  but  the  acids  of  the  earlier  stages  of  the 
growth  of  Semitic  religious  fruit  have  not  been,  as  in 
Christianity,  ripened  out  of  it.  However  necessary  these 
acids  may  be  to  the  flavor  of  the  ripened  fruit,  it  is  fatal 
to  the  flavor  of  that  which  wilts  before  it  ripens. 

An  investigation  such  as  that  we  have  been  pursuing 
makes  it  very  clear  that  Kenan's 1  hypothesis  of  a  primi- 
tive Semitic  tendency  to  monotheism  (at  least  as  at  first 
presented)  can  no  longer  be  maintained.  If  in  the  reli- 
gious sphere  the  Semites  have  anywhere  proven  them- 
selves worthy  teachers  of  the  race,  it  has  not  been  because 
they  had  at  the  first  a  clearer  conception  of  monotheism 
than  others,  but  because  the  circumstances  of  their  desert 
and  oasis  environment  led  them  in  their  religion  to  em- 
phasize those  functions  of  life  which  are  most  closely 
connected  with  the  growth  of  moral  and  religious  feel- 
ing in  the  individual  and  in  the  race.2  This  emphasis 
led  them  to  practices  which  were  in  the  early  time  com- 
paratively innocent,  and  which  embodied  in  gross  forms 
concepts  of  God  which  in  spiritual  form  are  now  the  best 
religious  possessions  of  our  humanity.3  It  was  thus 
slowly,  through  long  ages,  as  the  strata  of  the  earth  are 

1  Cf.  Kenan's  "  De  la  part  des  peuples  se'mitiques  "  in  the  Journal 
asiatique,  1859,  Uhistoire  generate,  des  langues  semitique,  3d  ed.,  1863, 
p.  5  ff.,  and  History  of  the  People  of  Israel,  Vol.  I,  chs.  iii,  iv.  What 
Renan  really  claims  in  the  later  work  is  not  monotheism,  but  heno- 
theism,  —  that  each  tribe  had  its  own  god,  but  did  not  deny  the  reality 
of  the  gods  of  other  tribes.  This  position  is  a  true  one ;  but  the  road 
from  it  to  monotheism  lay  through  a  long  development  in  which  tribes 
were  welded  into  nations  and  the  tribal  deities  were  formed  into  poly- 
theistic pantheons. 

aCf.  above,  p.  107  ff. 

»  /.«.  "  God  is  love,"  cf.  p.  107. 


322  SEMITIC   ORIGINS 


formed,  that  by  means  of  this  Semitic  life  and  worship  a 
religious  national  character  was  created  to  which  the  high- 
est conceptions  could  be  intrusted  for  embodiment  in 
human  life,  —  in  which  "  the  Word  could  become  flesh  and 
dwell  among  us."  We  need  here,  as  always,  to  remember 
that  "  that  is  not  first  which  is  spiritual,  but  that  which  is 
natural,  and  afterward  that  which  is  spiritual." 

Matriarchates  and  polyandry  have  been  developed  in 
many  parts  of  the  world,1  but  nowhere  on  such  a  gigantic 
scale  as  among  the  Semites ;  nowhere  else  did  environ- 
ment so  long  protect  the  institution  and  render  its  effects 
so  permanent ;  no  other  institution  of  the  kind  became 
the  stock  to  produce  such  a  noble  fruitage  ;  nor  was  any 
other  so  situated  geographically  as  to  discharge  both  its 
sewage  and  its  nectar  into  the  springs  from  which  the  civ- 
ilization of  our  modern  life  drew  its  early  draughts  of  in- 
spiration. All  this  seems  to  have  been  permitted  in  the 
case  of  the  Semites  by  a  wise  Providence,  who  thus  pre- 
pared a  soil  in  which  the  best  religious  and  ethical  ideals 
could  flourish,  and  who  thus  brought  out  of  this  cult  in 
the  end  more  of  good  than  of  evil. 

1  See  above,  p.  59  S. 


GENERAL   INDEX 


Abdi-kheba,  wrote  letters  from  Jeru- 
salem, cir.  1400  B.C.,  242;  complains 
government  is  being  overthrown, 
274. 

Abel,  Lndwig,  227. 

Abu,  meaning  both  "  father "  and 
"husband,"  68;  an  early  epithet  of 
Sin,  201. 

Abyssinia,  8,  25,  29;  marriage  in, 
48  ff.,  66;  sycamore  sacred  in,  89; 
Semitic  religion  in,  135  ff. ;  agricul- 
tural nature  of,  138. 

Adapa  myth,  264. 

Adar,  possibly  a  name  of  Ninib,  q.v. 

Adonis,  Greek  name  of  Taramuz-Esh- 
mun,  an  epithet,  86,  263;  worship 
of,  at  Gebal,  245  ff.,  265;  in  North 
Africa,  256. 

.Elian,  37,  253. 

zKneas,  story,  a  myth  of  Ashtart  cult, 
255,  314  ff. 

jEsculapius,  a  Greek  name  for  Esh- 
mun,  252,  265,  267. 

Afar  or  Dankali,  10,  25. 

Africa,  held  to  be  home  of  Semites, 
6;  of  Caucasic  race,  7;  northern 
part  separated  from  southern,  18; 
from  Europe  by  end  of  last  glacial 
epoch,  19;  home  of  Hamito-Semitic 
stock  in  north  of,  23;  Semites 
crossed  into,  29;  Baal  worship  in, 
150  ff.;  Ashtart  worship  in,  253  ff. 

Agade,  a  city  of  Babylonia,  162 ;  noted 
for  its  grain,  158 ;  for  its  dates,  159 ; 
held  hegemony  for  a  time,  163;  seat 
of  worship  of  Shamash,  212;  older 
than  Larsa,  213. 

Agriculture,  beginnings  of,  in  Pales- 
tine, 146;  in  Babylonia,  156  ff., 
171  ff. ;  individual  property  in  land 
in  Babylonia,  cir.  6000  B.C.,  158  ff. ; 
connection  with  growth  of  cities, 
162, 171  ff . ;  effect  of,  on  decalogue, 
294  ff. 

Aksum,  capital  of  Semitic  kingdom  in 
Abyssinia,  135. 


Alashia,  El-Amarna  letters  from, 
thought  to  be  Cyprus,  250. 

Al-Fals,  an  Arabic  god  derived  by 
epithet  from  Athtar,  134. 

Al-Galsad,  an  Arabic  god  developed 
from  Athtar,  134. 

Alilat,  Greek  name  of  Al-Lat,  234. 

Allah,  God  of  Islam,  developed  from 
Semitic  mother  goddess,  131 ;  said 
to  have  daughters,  235. 

Al-Lat,  daughter  of  Allah,  133 ;  mother 
of  Dhu-'l-Shara,  133 ;  worship  at 
Taif,  Petra,  and  Palmyra,  etc., 
233  ff . ;  goddess  of  unwedded  love, 
234 ;  name  an  epithet,  235. 

Allies,  T.N.,  317. 

Al-Uqaisir,  an  Arabic  god  developed 
from  Athtar,  134. 

Al-Uzza,  lived  in  samura  trees  at 
Nakhla,  88 ;  connected  with  Meccan 
sanctuary,  133,  235  ff . ;  daughter  of 
Allah,  ibid.;  companion  of  Al-Lat, 
234 ;  nature  and  worship  of,  235  ff . ; 
an  Ishtar  (Atbtar),  236  ff . ;  mean- 
ing of  name,  237. 

Amiaud,  Arthur,  185, 186, 187, 189, 190, 
191,  197,  200,  207,  210,  220,  260. 

Ammianus  Marcel  1  in  us,  47,  56,  61. 

Amorites,  old  inhabitants  of  Canaan, 
147. 

Amr  b.  Kulthum,  an  Arabian  poet, 
62. 

Antarah,  an  Arabian  poet,  56. 

Antiphanes,  251. 

Anu,  father  of  Bau,  191, 196;  locality 
of,  not  known,  195;  in  oldest  triad, 
206;  origin  obscure,  218;  head  of 
pantheon  after  Gudea,  219;  god  of 
Der,  ibid.;  partly  an  abstraction, 
ibid.;  originally  a  chthonic  god  of 
fertility,  220;  temple  of,  in  Ashur, 
222. 

Anu-banini,  king  of  Lulubi,  200;  wor- 
shipped Enlil  and  Ninlil,  203;  sig- 
nificance of  name,  220;  worshipped 
1  lam  ma  ii.  225,  229. 


323 


324 


GENERAL   INDEX 


Aphrodite,  Greek  name  of  Ashtart, 
249. 

Apollo,  a  name  for  Baal  in  Rhodes, 
252. 

Arabia,  cradle  of  Semites,  4,  24  ff., 
28  ff . ;  why  Semites  entered,  26, 119 ; 
had  it  forests  once?  26;  date  of 
Semitic  occupation,  27;  physical 
character,  28;  low  civilization,  32; 
oasis  life,  33;  poor  outside  oases, 
71;  no  fishing  in,  74;  some  hunting, 
ibid.;  once  better  watered?  ibid.; 
produced  early  civilization,  76; 
early  religion  of,  ch.  iii. ;  Arabia 
Felix,  124;  later  religion  of,  125  ff. ; 
survivals  of  primitive  goddess  in, 
233-237. 

Arad-Sin,  king  of  Larsa,  199;  wor- 
shipped Ishtar  of  Khallabi,  260. 

Aramaeans,  their  god,  224  ff. ;  their 
goddess,  239  ff . ;  in  Palestine,  271. 

Arbela,  a  Semitic  city  in  Assyria,  222; 
worship  of  Ishtar  in,  262. 

Ark  of  Yahwe,  295  ff. 

Arnold,  Friedrich  August,  62. 

Arnolt,  William  Muss-,  84,  111,  113, 
209,  222,  223. 

Artemis,  an  earth  goddess,  178;  of 
Hittito-Semitic  origin,  313. 

Aruru,  a  name  of  Ishtar,  257. 

Asher,  a  clan,  31,  32;  tribe  of  the 
goddess  Ashera,  248  ff. ;  a  god 
Asher,  249;  equated  with  Yahwe, 
ibid. ;  an  Israelitish  tribe,  271. 

Ashera,  a  post,  106 ;  a  goddess,  246  ff . ; 
consort  of  Hadad,  247;  in  Mesopo- 
tamia, ibid.;  name  derived  from 
pole,  248;  pole  at  Yahwe  shrines, 
290  ff;  goddess  changed  to  a  god, 
249. 

Ashtar-Chemosh,  god  of  Moab,  devel- 
oped from  Athtar,  141  ff. 

Ashtart,  Ashtoreth,  Ashtaroth  Kar- 
naim,  a  trans-Jordanic  town,  238. 

Ashtart,  totemism  of,  37;  associated 
with  water  god,  87;  goddess  at 
Sidon,  Tyre,  etc.,  148  ff. ;  symbol- 
ized by  cow,  201;  worshipped  at 
Ashtaroth  Karnaim,  241  ff. ;  at 
Sidon,  243  ff. ;  "name  of  Baal," 
244;  patroness  of  mariners,  ibid.; 
identified  with  moon,  ibid.;  at 
Tyre,  ibid.;  at  Byblos  (Gebal), 
244  ff . ;  carried  to  Mediterranean 
countries,  249  ff. 

Ashtoreth,  O.T.  name  of  Ashtart,  148. 


Ashkelon,  seat  of  worship  of  Ashtart 

and  Atargatis,  241  ff. 
Ashur,  chief  god   of  the  Assyrians, 

221  ff . ;     a    transformed    Ishtar, 

222  ff.;    derivation  of  name,  223; 
folk  etymology  of,  224,  n.  3. 

Ashur,  the  old  capital  of  Assyria,  221 ; 
a  Semitic  town,  222. 

Asia  Minor,  Semitic  influence  in 
311. 

Assurbanipal,  king  of  Assyria,  154, 
217;  repaired  temple  of  Ishtar  at 
Erech,  257;  worshipped  Ishtar  at 
Nineveh,  261 ;  at  Arbela,  262. 

Assurnasirpal,  king  of  Assyria,  154; 
exhibits  popularity  of  Ramman,  226, 
n.  2. 

Assyria,  dominion  of  the  city  Ashur, 
221. 

Astar,  chief  Semitic  deity  of  Abys- 
sinia, 135;  worship  carried  from 
Arabia,  136  ff. 

Atar,  Aramaic  name  of  Ishtar,  239  ff. ; 
nature  of,  241. 

Atargatis,  origin  debated,  238,  ff. ;  in 
Aramaic,  "  Atar-'atah,"  239;  associ- 
ated with  Hadad,  239,  ff. ;  Jensen's 
theory  of,  240;  a  composite  deity, 
240,  ff. ;  nature  of,  241,  ff;  fish  form 
of,  242  ff. 

Athirat,  a  Minaean  goddess,  derived 
from  'ashera,  131,  247. 

Athtar,  Sal  wan  god  of  fertility,  86,  87 ; 
transformed  from  mother  goddess, 
87;  called  "mother"  and  "he," 
125  ff;  retained  features  of  mother 
goddess,  126  ff. ;  localized  in  differ- 
ent places,  127  ff. ;  developed  by  epi- 
thets into  other  gods,  128  ff. 

'Ati,  name  of  a  goddess,  probably 
Attis,  239  ff. 

Atonement,  Day  of,  connected  with 
Tammuz  wailing,  114,  289. 

Attis,  a  Phrygian  goddess,  240 ;  com- 
pounded with  Atar  in  Atargatis, 
240  ff.,  313. 

Augustine,  42,  100,  110,  254,  255. 

Ava  or  Awa,  ancient  name  of  Yeha 
in  Abyssinia,  135. 

Baal,  name  applied  to  well-watered 
land,  105, 127 ;  god  of  each  Palestin- 
ian, Phoenician,  and  North  African 
locality,  148  ff. ;  Baal-Hamman,  Baal- 
Barith,  etc.,  148;  worshipped  on 
hilltops,  151 ;  in  Rhodes,  252 ;  Baal- 


GENERAL  INDEX 


325 


Hamman  in  North  Africa,  253  ff . ;  in 
Cyprus,  266. 

Babylon,  gained  hegemony  of  Baby- 
lonia, cir.  2300  B.C.,  163  ;  connection 
with  Gishgalla,  207  IT. 

Babylonia  held  to  be  home  of  Semites, 
1  ff . ;  wrongly,  22 ;  civilization  of, 
155  ff. ;  nature  of  religion  of,  171  ff . 

Baethgen,  Friedrich,  141, 144, 239,  240, 
265. 

Ball,  C.  J.,  86, 160, 185,  207. 

Bambyce,  also  called  Hierapolis  and 
Mabug,  239,  241,  243. 

Banks,  Edgar  James,  205,  228. 

Bantu  language,  not  related  to  Semit- 
ic, 17 ;  polyandry  of  Bantu  race,  60. 

Barras,  an  Abyssinian  god,  138  ff. 

Earth,  J.,  254. 

Basques,  18 ;  not  related  in  language 
to  Berbers,  19. 

Battersby,  G.  Harford-,  270,  276,  278. 

Bau,  goddess  of  Uruazagga,  185;  cult 
of,  189  ff . ;  a  Semitic  goddess,  190  ff . ; 
meaning  of  name,  ibid.;  daughter 
of  Anu,  191,196. 

Baudissin,  Graf  von,  226,  284,  314. 

Baudoin,  Jean, 177. 

Bedza language,  10. 

Belin  language,  10. 

Belkassen  ben  Sedira,  10. 

Belser,  C.,  225. 

Benjamin,  a  clan,  an  offshoot  of  Jo- 
sephites,  271;  meaning  of  name, 
ibid.,  n.  5. 

Bent,  J.  Theodore,  25,  49,  89, 112, 135, 
136, 137,  138,  237. 

Benzinger,  Immanuel,  68,  99, 115,  296. 

Berbers,  a  white  race,  16;  identical 
with  Iberian  race,  etc.,  18  ff. ;  lan- 
guage of,  kindred  to  Egyptian,  20; 
their  independent  system  of  writ- 
ing, 20  ff . ;  polyandry  and  date  cul- 
ture among,  117. 

Berger,  Philippe,  150,  254. 

Berossos,  91. 

Bertholet,  A.,  85. 

Berlin,  G.,  6,  22,  76. 

Bezold,  Carl,  225,  310. 

Bickell,  E.,  236. 

Blandford,  W.  T.,  138. 

Bliss,  F.  J.,  137. 

Bloch,  A.,  254. 

Blunt,  Lady  Anne,  55,  71,  75. 

Bne-Ebed-Ashera,  a  clan  in  the  El- 
Amarna  period,  perhaps  same  as 
Asher,  32,  246  ff.,  248. 


Bokhari,  65,  105. 
Bonavia,  E.,  90,  93. 
Bonk,  Hugo,  282. 
Borelli,  Jules,  25. 

Borsippa,   suburb   of   Babylon   colo- 
nized from  Shirpurla,  210  ff. 
Breasted,  J.  H.,  274. 
Briggs,  Charles  A.,  292. 
Brinton,  Daniel  G.,  6,  7, 13, 16, 18,  23, 

24,25. 
British  polyandry,  61;  possibility  of, 

among  Semites,  69. 
Brockelmann,  C.,  78. 
Brown,  Francis,  226. 
Brown,  Robert,  Jr.,  37,  116,  315. 
Bruce,  A.  B.,  292. 
Brugsch,  Heinrich,  10. 
Briinnow,  R.  E.,  113, 160, 182, 192, 193, 

194, 196,  201,  207,  211,  215,  218. 
Budde,  Karl,  89,  95,  108, 148, 149,  203, 

272,  275,  276,  277,  279,  281,  287,  288, 

291,  292,  295,  297,  298,  299,  301,  303. 
Biihler,  Georg,  59. 
Buhl,  Franz,  68,  226,  238,  282. 
Bull,  as  symbol  of  Athtar  and  other 

gods,  201 ;  of  Yahwe,  298. 
Bunini,  an  attendant  of  the  god  Sha- 

mash,  215. 
Bur-Sin,  king  of  Ur,  159 ;  worshipped 

Ramman,  225. 
Byblos,  or  Gebal,  worship  of  Ashtart 

in,  244  ff. 

Caesar,  Julius,  60. 

Camel,  helped  to  destroy  the  vegeta- 
tion of  Arabia,  74;  domesticated 
early,  75. 

Cappadocia,  Semitic  influence  in,  311. 

Carpenter,  J.  Estlin,  270,  276,  278. 

Carthage,  chronology  of,  122;  Ash- 
tart  worship  in,  255  ff. ;  temple  of 
Eshmun  in,  266,  267. 

Catullus,  315. 

Ceres,  a  North  African  name  of  Ash- 
tart,  255. 

Chamir  language,  10. 

Charles,  R.  H.,  89,  95, 121. 

Chemosh,  chief  god  of  Moab,  141  ff . 

Cherubim,  personification  of  winds, 
91,94. 

Cheyne,  T.  K.,  36,  241. 

Christianity,  influence  and  power  of, 
319  ff. 

Chronology,  of  southern  and  western 
Semites,  122;  of  Babylonia  and 
Assyria,  153,  154 ;  grounds  of  Baby- 


320 


GENERAL  INDEX 


Ionian  chronology,  155  n. ;  of  He- 
brews, 268. 

Circumcision,  originated  in  primitive 
Ishtar  worship,  98  ff.;  among  He- 
brews, 99;  among  Arabs,  ibid.; 
Arabian  ceremony  of,  100;  a  prepa- 
ration for  marriage,  100  ft.;  con- 
nected with  spring  festival,  110; 
among  Hamites,  115;  native  Ha- 
mitic  practice,  117 ;  in  Yahwe  wor- 
ship, 280  ff . 

Cities,  origin  of,  in  Babylonia,  162. 

Civilization,  developed  in  river  val- 
leys, 155. 

Clan,  organization,  30;  among  Se- 
mites, 30  ff . ;  genesis  of,  34 ;  eco- 
nomic purpose  of,  38  ff . ;  age  of 
republican  clans  in  Arabia,  71  ff . ; 
two  types  of  Arabian  clan,  267  ff . 

Clarke,  W.  N.,  82. 

Clay,  A.  T.,  162. 

Clement  of  Alexandria,  251,  252. 

Coe,  G.  A.,  107. 

Collitz,  Hermann,  250. 

Collizza,  Giovanni,  10. 

Compound  deities,  late  date  of,  141, 
151,  240  ff . 

Conder,  C.  R..  312. 

Cook,  Stanley  A.,  228. 

Cope,  Edward,  170,  204. 

Coptic  language,  10. 

Cornill,  Carl  Heinrich,  270. 

Couard,  Ludwig,  296,  297. 

Covenant,  religious  consequence  of 
Yahwe's,  291,  301. 

Cow,  significance  of,  as  symbol  of  Ish- 
tar and  Ashtart,  201. 

Cradle  of  Semites,  theories  of,  1  ff . ; 
Arabia,  24  ff . 

Crete,  Ashtart  worship  in,  252. 

Croll,  James,  14,  15, 19. 

Crum,  W.  E.,  10. 

Cybele,  known  in  North  Africa,  255; 
in  Phrygia,  313. 

Cyprus,  Semitic  Baal  in,  151  ff. ;  wor- 
ship of  Ashtart  in,  249  ff. ;  influence 
of  Cypriotic  worship  on  Greece,  252. 

Cyrus,  conquered  Babylon,  154;  did 
he  worship  Semitic  gods  ?  310. 

Dagon,  a  Semitic  god  in  East  and 
West,  229 ;  in  Assyria  and  Palestine, 
230 ;  theories  as  to  origin  of,  230  ff . ; 
a  transformed  goddess,  231 ;  proba- 
bly not  Aramaean,  232. 

Damkina,  goddess,  spouse  of  Ea,  198. 


Dan,  Israelitish  tribe,  273. 

Dangin,  Fra^ois  Thureau,  106,  146, 

158, 159,  160,  161,  164,  169,  182,  187, 

198,  199,  207,  218,  220,  225,  261. 
Dankali  or  Afar,  10,  20,  25. 
Dates,  a  fruit,  75 ;  gathered  in  Sept.- 

Oct.,  Ill  ff . ;  those  of  Agade  famed, 

159 ;  house  for  storage  of,  160. 
Davis,  John  D.,  185, 186,  190, 191,  195, 

199. 

Dawkins,  Boyd,  18. 
Death,  conception  of  life  after,  95  ff. 
Decalogue,  the   Yahwistic,  110;    the 

Mosaic,  292  ff . 
Decharme,  P.,  314. 
De  Goeje,  M.  J.,  5,  24,  88. 
Deissmann,  G.  Adolf,  285. 
Dekerto,   Greek  name   of  Atargatis, 

243. 

Delitzsch,  Franz,  283. 
Delitzsch,  Friedrich,  97,  103,  160,  163, 

164,  165,  166,  205,  209,  215,  217,  222, 

223,  224,  226,  230,  283,  296. 
Deniker,  J.,  20. 
Derenbourg,  Hartwig  and  Joseph,  124. 

125, 126. 
Descent,    counted    through    mother, 

51  ff. ;  transfer  of,  to  paternal  line, 

66;   from   gods,   130;    Ishtar 's,   to 

lower  world,  259. 
Dhu-'l-Khalasa,  Arabic  god,  134. 
Dhu-'l-Shara,    god    worshipped   with 

Al-Lat  by  Nabathaeans,  233;  son  of 

Al-Lat,   234;    his  worship,  263;    a 

Tammuz  or  Adonis,  267. 
Dido,  a  name  of  Tanith,  254  ff. 
Dillmann,  August,  275,  283,  292. 
Dilmun,  an  island  in  Persian  Gulf, 

211. 

Diodorus  Siculus,  242,  243,  252,  253. 
Diognetus,  Epistle  to,  319. 
Dionysios  Halic.,  315. 
Divorce,  among  Semites,  45  ff . ;  among 

Hebrews,  45 ;    Babylonians,  45  ff . ; 

Arabs,  46  ff. 
Dog,  as  name  of  a  sacred  prostitute, 

188,  251,  n.  2. 
Doughty,  C.  M.,  17,  28,  32,  39,  47,  51, 

72,  74,  75,  77,  87,  88,  99, 100, 101, 109, 

110,  111,  114, 136,  233. 
Dozy,  R.,  69. 
Driver,  S.  R.,  3, 102,  103,  104,  141, 146, 

244,  251,  252,  269,  276,  278,  282,  283, 

284,296. 

Drummond,  Henry,  107. 
Dumuzi,  same  as  Tammuz,  263. 


GENERAL   INDEX 


327 


Dumuzizuab,  goddess  of  Kinunir,  211 ; 

precursor  of  Nabu,  212. 
Dungi,  king   of    Ur,    153;    mentions 

Nina,  188;  Ea,  198;  Sin,  200;  Ner- 

gal.  215 ;  worshipped  Ishtar  of  Erech, 

256. 
Dyer,  Louis,  252,  265,  315. 

Ea,  a  god,  pictured  as  a  fish,  91, 196  ff ; 
one  of  Babylonia's  principal  deities, 
195;  god  of  Eridu,  196;  a  trans- 
formed Ishtar,  196  ff. ;  god  of  wis- 
dom, 198;  member  of  oldest  triad, 
206;  said  to  be  Marduk's  father, 
209. 

Eabani,  story  of,  43  ff.,  83  ff.,  93  ff., 
96  ff . ;  date  of,  44 ;  hair  like  grain, 
218. 

Eannadu  I,  (Eannatum),  king  of 
Shirpurla,  153;  Eanuadu  II,  Patesi 
of  Shirpurla,  ibid.,  and  161;  con- 
quered Elam,  180;  mentions  Ishtar, 
182;  Nana,186;  Nina,  188;  Ea,198; 
ascribes  his  victory  to  Enlil,  206; 
conquered  Gisbgalla,  207;  wor- 
shipped Shamash,  214. 

Ebers,  Georg,  101. 

Economy,  cause  of  paternal  kinship, 
72;  effect  on  religious  conceptions, 
82 ;  causes  transformation  of  social 
structure,  120;  economic  condition 
of  south  Arabia,  124 ;  economic  test 
of  deities,  179  ff ;  its  value,  221 ; 
economic  transformation  of  Yahwe 
worship,  291  ff . 

Eden,  meaning  of  Biblical  narrative 
of,  43  ff.,  93  ff. ;  origin  and  develop- 
ment of  idea,  96  n. ;  meaning  of  ex- 
pulsion from,  97  ff. 

Edom,  the  country,  32;  name  of  Baal 
among  Edomites,  152;  Al-Lat  wor- 
shipped in,  233  ff. 

Egypt,  language  of,  10;  did  not  con- 
quer Berbers,  20;  nor  influence 
Babylonian  religious  conceptions, 

iea 

Elam,  conquered  by  Eannadu,  180; 
conquered  south  Babylonia,  257; 
Semitic  influence  on,  310. 

Elijah,  work  of,  300. 

Euki  (Ea),  a  principal  Babylonian 
god,  195. 

Enlil  (Bel),  god  of  Nippur  and  chief 
deity  of  Babylonia,  163,  195 ;  called 
king  of  countries,  183;  superior  to 
gods  of  Shirpurla,  185;  father  of 


Sin,  202;  originally  a  Sumerian 
god,  204 ;  Semitic  element  in,  204  ff . ; 
member  of  oldest  triad,  206. 

Enshagkushanna,  lord  of  Sumir,  153; 
devoted  spoil  to  Enlil,  202,  206. 

Entemeua,  Patesi  of  Shirpurla,  153, 
160;  built  house  for  storage  of 
dates,  ItiO;  mentions  Nana,  186; 
Nina,  188;  Ea,  198. 

Enzu,  a  name  of  the  god  Sin,  199; 
meaning  of,  201. 

Ephraem,  the  Syrian,  42, 100,  110,  234. 

Ephraim,  a  Josephite  clan,  271. 

Epiphanius,  233,  234,  263. 

Epping,  J.,  106. 

Erech,  a  city  of  Babylonia,  162;  Ln- 
galzaggisi,  its  king,  146,  153;  held 
Babylonian  hegemony  at  various 
times,  163;  Ishtar  cult  in,  256  ff.; 
form  of,  259. 

Eridu,  one  of  the  oldest  Babylonian 
cities,  162 ;  held  hegemony  in  Baby- 
lonia at  various  times,  163;  oldest 
Semitic  settlement,  196  ff . ;  seat  of 
a  prehistoric  empire,  198. 

Erim,  a  section  of  Shirpurla,  183, 185; 
wrongly  called  Gishgalla,  185,  207; 
shown  by  its  goddess  to  be  Semitic, 
186  ff .,  192 ;  a  colony  of  Ur,  200. 

Erman,  Adolf,  8,  9, 10,  20,  25,  26. 

Erua,  another  name  of  Dumuzizuab 
or  Tashmit,  212,  n.  4. 

Eryx,  seat  of  Ashtart  worship  in 
Sicily,  252. 

Eshmun,  a  name  of  Tammuz,  92;  at 
Tyre,  244 ;  reasons  for  identification 
with  Tammuz,  265  ff.;  possible  ety- 
mology of,  267,  n.  2. 

Eshmnnazer  II,  king  of  Sidon,  122; 
priest  of  Ashtart,  243;  built  her 
temple,  244  n. 

Eth-Baal,  king  of  Tyre  and  priest  of 
Ashtart,  244. 

Ethiopic  language,  10. 

Euphrates,  overflow  of,  156  ff. 

Eusebius,  37,  150,  230,  238,  244. 

Euting,  J.,  69,  70,  75,  77. 

Ezana,  royal  author  of  inscription 
from  Aksum,  138. 

Family,  Semitic,  39  ff . ;  of  primitive 
man,  41  ff.;  effect  of  temporary 
marriage  upon,  49  ff. 

Farnell,  Lewis  Richard,  178,  255,  314, 
315,  316. 

Father,  not  known  in  Thibetan  poly- 


328 


GENERAL    INDEX 


andry,  68 ;  head  of  Arabian  family 
by  time  of  prophet,  123;  Athtar  a 
father,  124 ;  father  and  mother  com- 
bined in  one  deity,  205;  spiritual 
conception  of  fatherhood  of  Yahwe, 
306  ff. 

Feasts,  number  and  character  of, 
108  ff. ;  in  Nisan,  108  ff . ;  sacrifices 
and  lewd  ceremonies  at,  110;  date 
festival  in  autumn,  111;  feast  of 
Mascal  in  Abyssinia,  112,  137 ;  feast 
of  Tammuz,  112  ff. ;  agricultural 
feasts  in  Babylonia  and  Palestine, 
114,  288  ff . ;  two  feasts  primitive, 
115;  feast  of  Bau,  190;  of  Adonis 
at  Gebal,  245  ff . ;  spring  feast  at 
Paphos,  251;  of  Tanith  in  North 
Africa,  254;  of  Yahwe,  281  ff.,  287  ff. 

Fell,  W.,  86,  87,  128,  129. 

Fischer,  Theobald,  75,  76,  79,  98, 161, 
171. 

Fishing,  no  important  part  of  Arabian 
life,  74 ;  at  Eridu,  196  ff. ;  at  Ashke- 
lon,  242  ff. 

Fiske,  John,  14,  18,  107. 

Frazer,  J.  G.,  85, 114, 179. 

Frey,  J.,  120. 

Frost,  John,  173, 175. 

Gabelenz,  Graf  von  der,  18, 19. 

Gad,  a  clan,  271;  in  east-Jordanic 
country,  273. 

Gad,  god  of  the  tribe  Gad,  249 ;  Tam- 
muz wailing  in  cult  of,  289. 

Galalama,  Patesi  of  Shirpurla,  190. 

Galla  language,  10. 

Gallas,  the,  25,  115. 

Game,  in  Arabia,  74. 

Gamil-Sin,  king  of  Ur,  159. 

Gatumdug,  an  epithet  of  Bau,  some- 
times treated  as  a  separate  goddess, 
191 ;  once  an  epithet  of  Nana,  191,  n. 
6  and  260. 

Gebal,  a  Phoenician  city  and  seat  of 
Ashtart  worship,  244. 

Geiger,  Abraham,  132. 

Gerland,  A.  A.,  6, 12,  13,  15,  16,  25. 

Gesenius,  Wilhelm,  36,  226,  282,  284. 

Ghabghab,  a  rivulet  or  trench  at 
Mecca,  235. 

Ghillany,  R.,  275. 

Giddings,  Franklin  H.,  13,  14,  33,  34, 
40,  41,  49,  50,  53,  55,  60,  63,  73, 
77. 

Gillett,  C.  R.,  317. 

Girsu,  one  of  the  districts  of  Shirpurla, 


185;  a  Semitic  settlement,  192,  194; 
name  interpreted  as  "  body  lance," 
192,  n.  1 ;  oldest  settlement  of  Shir- 
purla, 194;  seat  of  original  kingdom, 
ibid.  ;  contained  a  district  Kinunir, 
210  ff. 

Gishban,  an  old  Babylonian  town 
conquered  by  Eannadu,  206;  situa- 
tion and  religion  of,  218. 

Gishgalla,  a  south  Babylonian  town 
of  which  Babylon  was  possibly  a 
colony,  207  ff . 

Glacial  epoch,  causes  of,  14. 

Glaser,  Eduard,  64,  124, 125, 136,  136, 
227. 

Goat,  destructive  of  Arabian  vegeta- 
tion, 74 ;  domesticated  early,  75. 

Goddesses,  the  earliest  Semitic  deities, 
120,  179  ff. ;  natural  agricultural 
deities,  199;  transformed  by  war, 
180  ff. 

Golenischeff,  M.,  124. 

Gottheil,  Richard,  J.  H.,  239. 

Grassarie,  M.  de  la,  308. 

Gray,  G.  Buchanan,  282. 

Gray,  Louis,  310. 

Greece,  goddesses  of,  178 ;  Semitic  in- 
fluence upon,  315  ff . ;  corruption  of 
society  in,  316. 

Gruneisen,  Carl,  95,  121. 

Gudea,  Patesi  of  Shirpurla,  153 ;  sacri- 
fices offered  to  his  statue,  168 ;  wor- 
shipped Nana,  183,  184,  186;  Nina, 
188;  Bau,  189,  190,  192,  199;  called 
Shirpurla  a  city,  207;  mentions 
Khallabi,  260. 

Gudua,  another  name  for  Kutu  (Ku- 
tha),215. 

Guidi,  Ignazio,  1,  2,  22,  75,  n.  4. 

Gula,  an  epithet  of  Bau,  became  god- 
dess of  healing,  191. 

Gummere,  F.  B.,  179. 

Gunkel,  Hermann,  98. 

Guthe,  Hermann,  270,  275. 

Guti,  a  god  of  the  Guti,  217  ff. 

Guti  or  Suti,  a  people,  37,  199;  their 
religion,  217. 

Guyard,  Stanislaus,  164. 

Haarbriicker,  Theodor,  99. 

Hadad,  Aramaean  equivalent  of  Ram- 
man,  224;  equated  with  R.,  226; 
worshipped  in  Damascus,  ibid. ; 
name  means  "thunderer,"  ibid.; 
called  Rimmon ,  227 ;  diffusion  of  wor- 
ship, ibid.;  a  god  of  fertility,  228 ;  a 


GENERAL  INDEX 


329 


transformed  Ishtar,  229;  Atargatis 
worshipped  with  him,  239  ff. 

Haeckel,  Ernst,  13,  16. 

Hale'vy,  Joseph,  31,  64,  86, 130, 131, 135, 
164,  165,  209,  227. 

Hamilton,  an  English  traveller,  48. 

Hamites,  language  of,  kindred  to 
Semitic,  9  ff . ;  blonds  among,  17 ; 
form  one  stock  with  Semites,  20; 
records  of,  go  back  to  dawn  of  his- 
tory, ibid. ;  home  in  North  Africa, 
21 ;  totemistic,  37 ;  passed  savagery 
when  Semites  separated  from,  73; 
polyandrous,  74;  institutions  of,  115 
ff . ;  civilization  derived  from  oases, 
118. 

Harding,  E.  E.,  108. 

Harith,  an  Arabian  poet,  56. 

Harnack,  Adolf,  317. 

Harran,  a  seat  of  the  worship  of  the 
moon  god,  202. 

Hasa,  a  region  in  Arabia,  57. 

Haupt,  Paul,  36,  43,  83,  85,  91,  96,  97, 
103,  113,  165,  168,  183,  184,  200,  214, 
218,  257,  258,  259. 

Heber,  a  clan  of  Asher,  31,  274. 

Hebrews,  beginnings  of  the  nation, 
270  ff . ;  proposed  identification  with 
the  Khabiri,  274. 

Hegra,  an  Arabian  seat  of  the  worship 
of  Al-Lat,  234. 

Hehn,  Victor,  75,  76,  161. 

Heracles,  a  Greek  name  of  Baal,  265  ff. 

Herodotus,  42,  43,  99,  100,  101,  117, 
210,  234,  242,  252,  258,  263,  314,  316. 

Heuzey,  Leon,  editor  of  De  Sarzec's 
Dteouvertes  en  Chaldte,  see  De 
Sarzec. 

Hierapolis,  also  called  Bambyce  and 
Mabug,  239,  241,  243. 

Hilderbrand,  Richard,  59,  60,  72,  73, 
77, 119, 146. 

Hilprecht,  Hermann,  V.,  146,  162,  166, 
180,  181,  197,  198,  200,  202,  203,  204, 
213,  217,  219,  220,  225. 

Hiram,  king  of  Tyre,  122,  244. 

Hittites,  in  northern  Syria  before 
Egyptian  conquest,  147 ;  civilization 
and  language  of,  311  ff . ;  Semitic 
influence  on,  312  ff. ;  supposed  ori- 
gin, 313. 

Hoffman,  E.  A.,  archaic  tablet  of, 
158  ff. ;  161,  213;  translation  of,  213, 
n.  5. 

Hoffmann,  Georg,  104,  141,  226,  248, 
253,254. 


Holmes,  William  EL,  14. 

Holzinger,  H.,  275,  285. 

Hommel,  Fritz,  1,  3,  21,  22,  76,  108, 

124,  131,  185,  207,  208,  211,  223,  247, 

249,  274,  283. 

Hopkins,  E.  Washburn,  59,  296. 
Hubal,  a  pre-1  s lam ic  name  of  Allah, 

134. 

Hull,  Edward,  139. 
Human   life,   where  first  appeared, 

12  ff. 

Hunting  in  Arabia,  74. 
Hurgronje,  C.  Snouck,  48,  100,  236. 
Husband,  living  in  wife's  tribe,  54  ff. 

Ibn-al-Kalbi,  235. 

Ibn-Hisham,  88,  235,  236. 

Ibn-Kutaiba,  233. 

Malion,  a  seat  of  Ashtart  worship  in 
Cyprus,  266. 

Ihering,  Rudolf  von,  171. 

Il-Azza,  a  Sabbaean  god,  237,  n.  4. 

Iliad,  249,  250. 

Ilmaqqahu,  a  form  of  Athtar,  87, 
128  ff. ;  god  of  'Amran,  128. 

Immeru,  a  name  of  Ramman,  225. 

Immortality,  Semitic  ideas  of,  95  ff. 

Imr-ul-Kais,  62. 

lolaos,  a  Greek  name  of  Eshmun, 
265  ff. 

Isaac  of  Antioch,  236. 

Is&f ,  a  Meccan  god,  absorbed  in  Allah, 
133. 

Ishmi-Dagan,  a  king  of  Isin,  257. 

Ishtar,  totemism  of,  37 ;  cult  of,  in 
Semitic  world,  42 ;  connection  with 
Eabani,  43;  cult  found,  83;  a 
survival  from  primitive  conditions, 
84;  impure  priestesses  of,  ibid.; 
connection  with  desire,  ibid.;  a 
water  goddess,  86,  92  ff. ;  connected 
with  the  palm,  92  ff.,  98;  with  cir- 
cumcision, 98;  etymology  of,  102  ff. ; 
goddess  of  oases,  105  ff . ;  at  Kish, 
181  ff. ;  at  Susa,  184  ff . ;  goddess 
of  Erim,  185  ff.;  of  Khallabi,  190, 
260  ff . ;  symbolized  by  cow,  201 ;  at 
Agade,  213;  maintained  identity 
there,  215 ;  among  the  Guti,  217  ff. ; 
coupled  with  Ashur  in  Assyria, 
221  ff.,  224;  survivals  of,  chap,  vi; 
at  Erech,  256  ff . ;  daughter  of  Anu, 
259. 

Isin,  a  Babylonian  city  which  for  a 
time  held  the  hegemony,  163,  257. 

Isis,  Egyptian  earth  goddess,  116. 


330 


GENERAL  INDEX 


Islam,  heathen  basis  of,  131  ff. ;  influ- 
ence of,  320  ff. 

Israel,  beginnings  of  the  nation, 
270  ff , ;  early  disorganized  condi- 
tion, 273  ;  stele  of,  274  ff. 

Issachar,  a  clan,  271. 

Jackson,  A.  V.  W.,  310. 

Jacob-el,  a  place  in  Palestine,  274  ff. 

Jacobs,  Mr.,  35,  36. 

Jacut,  see  Yaqut. 

Jastrow,  Morris,  7,  23,  37,  43,  44,  83, 
86,  91,  93,  97,  98,  109,  111,  112,  156, 
163,  190,  191,  195,  199,  200,  203,  209, 
212,  213,  215,  216,  217,  219,  220,  223, 
224,  225,  226,  228,  231,  232,  257,  258, 

259,  264,  272,  274,  284,  295,  312,  313. 
Jehovah,  see  Yahwe. 

Jensen,  Peter,  43,  83  ff.,  85,  103,  106, 
183,  185,  187,  197,  209,  210,  211,  212, 
216,  217,  224,  230,  231,  240,  246,  259, 

260,  264,  310,  311,  312,  313. 
Jeremias,  Alfred,  43,  84,  85,  95,  112, 

164, 195,  264,  266. 

Jerome,  144,  234,  238. 

Jesus  Christ,  effect  of  His  teaching  on 
the  conception  of  God,  303. 

Jethro,  priest  of  Yahwe  in  Midian, 
272;  initiated  Moses  into  Yahwe 
cult,  276  ff . 

Jinn,  as  partners  with  God,  36. 

Johnson,  F.  E.,  62. 

Jolly,  Julius,  59. 

Joseph,  a  clan,  271;  in  Egypt,  272; 
delivered  by  Yahwe,  ibid. ;  entered 
Palestine,  273;  name  as  name  of 
Palestinian  place,  274  ff. ;  Moses 
mediated  covenant  for,  276. 

Josephus,  Flavius,  37,  99,  230,  244. 

Judah,  a  tribe,  271 ;  Aramaic  element 
in,  272,  n.  4,  273;  absorbed  the  Ken- 
ites,  277  ff . ;  knowledge  of  Yahwe 
immemorial  among,  278;  union  of 
Tamar  with,  286. 

Judaism,  influence  of,  318. 

Justin,  255. 

Kabyle  language,  10. 

Karaindash,  king  of  Babylon,  267. 

Karnaim,  shortened  name  of  Ashta- 
roth  Karnaim,  238. 

Keane,  A.  H.,  7,  13, 15,  16,  18. 

Keasbey,  Lindley  M.,  30,  33,  39,  280. 

Kengi,  a  name  of  Sumir,  202. 

Kenites,  a  Sinaitic  clan,  272;  incor- 
porated in  Judah,  273,  277  ff. ;  cham- 


pions of  Yahwe,  277 ;  connected  with 
Midianites,  277;  David  said  to  be 
descended  from,  278,  n.  2;  perhaps 
extended  influence  to  Hamath,  284. 

Kent,  Charles  Foster,  270. 

Khabiri  in  the  El-Amama  letters,  274. 

Khallabi,  a  colony  of  Erim,  199;  seat 
of  the  worship  of  Ishtar,  260  ff . 

Khammurabi,  king  of  Babylon,  153, 
165,  198;  worshipper  of  Marduk, 
209;  suppressed  worship  of  Nabu, 
212 ;  repaired  temple  of  Shamash  at 
Larsa,  212;  at  Agade,  214;  wor- 
shipped Ramman,  225;  Dagon,  229; 
knew  goddess  Ashera,  247;  wor- 
shipped Ishtar  of  Khallabi,  260. 

Khumbaba,  god  of  Elam,  genesis  of, 
184,  n.  3. 

King,  L.  W.,  202,  209, 212,  213, 223, 247. 

Kinnir  or  Kiimunir,  a  part  of  Girsu 
and  an  old  name  of  Borsippa,  210  ff . 

Kinship,  method  of  reckoning,  50  ff. ; 
through  females,  51  ff.;  of  Joseph's 
sons,  52;  of  Abraham  and  Sarah, 
ibid. ;  among  Mandaeans,  Babyloni- 
ans, and  Hebrews,  53;  of  Jacob's 
children,  54 ;  through  father,  71  ff . ; 
in  Moab,  140  ff. ;  in  Palestine,  146; 
in  Babylonia,  159. 

Kish,  a  Babylonian  kingdom,  180 ;  re- 
ligion of,  181  ff . ;  conquered  by  Ean- 
nadu,  186  ff . ;  by  Enshagkushanna, 
202;  colonies  in  Elam,  310. 

Kition,  seat  of  worship  of  Ashtart  in 
Cyprus,  250  ff . ;  Eshmun  worshipped 
at,  266. 

Kittel,  Rudolf,  93,  275,  292. 

Koraish,  a  Meccan  tribe  to  which 
Mohammed  belonged,  235. 

Kremer,  von,  1,  2,  22,  75,  n.  4. 

Kuenen,  Abraham,  270,  276,  278,  284, 
292. 

Kutha  (Kntu),  an  old  Babylonian 
city,  162 ;  Nergal,  deity  of,  215. 

Labid,  an  Arabian  poet,  56. 

Lagash,  a  name  of  Shirpurla,  184. 

Lake  dwellers  of  Switzerland,  16,  17. 

Lane,  Edward  William,  47,  104,  105. 

Larsa,  a  Babylonian  city,  held  hege- 
mony for  a  time,  163,  199  ;  a  seat  of 
Shamash  worship,  212  ff. 

Lasirab,  king  of  Guti,  199. 

Law,  genesis  of  Pentateuchal,  303  ff. 

Le  Clerc,  282,  284. 

Legarde,  Paul  de  la,  104,  243,  267,  284. 


GENERAL    INDEX 


331 


Lehmann,  C.  F.,  155,  156,  165,  168. 

Lenormant,  Frar^ois,  86,  92,  196,  197, 
284. 

Lepsius,  the  Egyptologist,  25. 

Leto,  a  name  of  At i is,  313. 

Letourneau,  Ch.,  66,  67. 

Lenba,  James  H.,  107. 

Levi,  a  tribe,  271 ;  theory  of  origin, 
272. 

Levirate,  connection  with  polyandry, 
66  S. 

Libit-Ishtar,  king  of  Isin,  256. 

Lidzbarski,  Mark,  203,  228,  239,  255, 
272. 

Lubbock,  Sir  John,  15,  40. 

Lucian,  43,  85,  86,  100,  112,  113,  239, 
240,  241,  244,  245,  265,  314. 

Lngal-Erim,  name  of  a  masculinized 
Ishtar  at  Shirpurla,  183,  187. 

Lugal tarsi,  a  king  of  Kish,  153;  in- 
scription of,  181,  187,  n.  2,  205. 

Lugalzaggisi,  king  of  Erech,  153; 
reached  Mediterranean,  146,  271; 
tendency  to  deification  of,  168 ;  men- 
tioned Nana,  186;  Ea,  198;  son 
reared  by  Nidaba,  218 ;  worshipped 
Ishtar,  256  ff. 

Lnlubi,  an  old  Babylonian  state,  200, 
203,220. 

Lydus,  Johannes,  109,  250,  251. 

Mabug,  a  town  in  Lebanon  otherwise 

called  Hierapolis  and  Bambyce,  q.v. 
McAllister,  Alexander,  99, 101. 
McCurdy.  J.  F.,  163,  164, 165. 
McGee,  W.  J.,  170,  n  4. 
McLennan,  John  F.,  39,  40,  41,  59,  60, 

66,67. 
Macrobius,  178,  239,  240,  241,  262,  265, 

284. 
Ma'in,  an  ancient  city  and  kingdon  in 

south  Arabia,  124 ;  gods  of,  130  ff. ; 

influence  on  Keuites,  272. 
Malik,  an  attendant  of  the  god  Sha- 

in.-ish.  215. 
Malkatu,  consort  of  Shamash  of  Agade, 

214. 

Malkiel,  a  clan,  31. 
Mama,  an  epithet  of  Ban,  191,  n.  1. 
Man,  first  habitat  of,  12  ff. ;  antiquity 

of,  14  ff . ;  effect  of  natural  selection 

on  mind  of,  15  ff . 
Manasseh,  a  Josephite  clan,  271. 
Manishtu-irba,  king  of  Kish,  184. 
Manutu,  a  Nabathsean  god,  233. 
Marduk,  god  of  Babylon  who  displaced 


Enlil,  163,  207,  209;  a  Semitic  god, 
208  ff . ;  absorbed  myths  of  Nabu, 
209 ;  name  derived  from  sun,  209. 

Margoliouth,  G.,  283,  284. 

Marriage,  Semitic,  41  ff . ;  temporary, 
45  ff;  in  Sunan,48;  in  Mecca,  48; 
in  Abyssinia,  48  ff . ;  residence  of 
wife  during,  50  ff. ;  of  Abraham,  52 ; 
of  Ainnon  and  Tamar,  52 ;  of  Tab- 
nith,  52;  interruption  of,  55;  beena 
marriage,  55 ;  in  Mu'allakat  poems, 
56;  of  Samson,  56;  mot'a  marriage, 
61 ;  rise  of  endogamy,  62  ff . ;  for 
certain  days  of  the  week,  63;  by 
capture,  71  ff . 

Marti,  Karl,  283. 

Martial,  251. 

Maspe'ro,  G.,  38, 74, 115, 116, 117. 

Massaba,  phallic  symbol  of  deity,  102 ; 
found  in  Abyssinia,  136;  altars  at 
bases  of,  137 ;  a  part  of  Yahwe  cult, 
290  ff. 

Mayer,  Brantz,  173,  175. 

Mecca,  marriage  in,  48;  change  of 
heathenism  to  Islam  at,  132  ff. 

Mediterranean,  changes  in  level  of,  17 ; 
race  of,  18 ;  shore  of,  home  of  Semitic 
stock,  21,  24. 

Medr,  an  Abyssinian  god,  138  ff . 

Meissner,  Bruno,  68, 158. 

Melqart,  god  of  Tyre,  149 ;  developed 
from  Ashtart,  150,  244;  Eshmun 
called,  267. 

Menephtah,  stele  of,  274  ff . 

Men,  Victor,  58. 

Mesha,  king  of  Moab,  140, 143. 

Mesopotamia,  held  to  be  cradle  of 
Semites,  3  ff . ;  civilization  of,  155  ff . 

Messerschmidt,  L.,  311,  312,  313,  314. 

Mexico,  civilization  and  religion  of, 
172  ff. 

Meyer,  Ed.,  147,  163. 

Midiauites,  connected  with  Kenites, 
277. 

Migne,  Jacques  Paul,  237. 

Mill,  Hugh  Robert,  118,  155. 

Moab,  physical  conditions  of,  139;  a 
land  of  pastures,  139  ff. ;  language 
of  kindred  to  Hebrew,  140 ;  society 
of  patriarchal,  140  ff.;  religion  of, 
141  ff. 

Mohammed,  introduced  into  Islam 
many  spiritual  elements,  131; 
erected  them  on  substratum  of  hea- 
thenism, 132  ff. 

Mohammedanism,  influence  of,  320  ff- 


332 


GENEKAL   INDEX 


Monasticism,  a  reaction  from  Semitic 
corruption,  317  ff . 

Monogamy,  temporary,  in  early  times, 
45  ff. 

Monotheism,  development  of,  307  ff . ; 
not  primitive,  321. 

Monro,  Robert,  16. 

Moore,  George  F.,  89,  103,  141,  143, 
148,  230,  238,  247,  248,  289,  293. 

Mordtmann,  J.  H.,  124,  126, 127, 128, 
130,  138. 

Morgan,  J.  de,  8,  20,  26,  310. 

Mosaism,  moral  content  of,  292  ff. 

Moses,  circumcision  of,  99,  280 ;  flight 
from  Egypt,  272 ;  mediated  covenant 
with  Yah  we,  275 ;  a  zealot  for  primi- 
tive Yah  we  worship,  290;  connection 
with  Jewish  law,  303  ff. 

Mother,  descent  reckoned  through, 
51  ff . ;  mother  goddess  the  primitive 
Semitic  deity,  ch.  iii ;  transformed 
into  masculine  deities,  chs.  iv,  v ;  in 
Arabia,  Palestine  and  Africa,  ch.  iv ; 
in  Babylonia  and  Assyria,  ch.  v; 
not  lost  in  transformation,  129  ff. 
and  ch.  vi ;  mother  and  father  com- 
bined in  one  deity,  205. 

Moulton,  W.  J.,  281. 

Movers,  F.  C.,  284. 

Mugheir,  modern  name  of  Ur,  199, 
201. 

Miiller,  D.  H.,  124,  129,  135,  136,  138, 
139. 

Muller,  F.  Max,  116,  227. 

Muller,  Friedrich,  10,  11, 12,  17,  24. 

Muller,  Karl,  317. 

Muller,  W.  Max,  8,  9,  118,  146,  231, 
237,  242,  248,  274,  284. 

Mysticism,  sexual  aspects  of,  308. 

Myths,  as  a  clew  to  origins,  195  ff. 

Nabathaeans,  an  Arabic  tribe,  263. 
Nabonidos,  neo-Babylonian  king,  154 ; 

worshipped  Shamash  at  Agade,  215. 
Nabu,  god  of  Borsippa,  210 ;  a  Semitic 

god,  211 ;  said  to  be  son  of  Ea,  212. 
Nabu-apal-iddin,  king  of  Babylon,  154, 

215. 
Naila,  a  Meccan  goddess,  spouse  of 

Isaf,  133. 
Nairs,  40,  59  ff. ;  Nair  polyandry,  61, 

63  ff. ;  relation  to  Thibetan,  69  ff. 
Nakhla,  valley  southwest  of  Mecca, 

seat  of  Al-Uzza  worship,  236. 
Nana,   a   name   of   Ishtar   at   Kish, 

181  ff. ;  etymology  of,  182 ;  goddess 


of  Erim,  185;  a  Semitic  goddess, 
186  ff.;  of  Khallabi,  199,  260  ff.; 
applied  to  Ishtar  at  Erech,  256  ff. 

Naphtali,  a  Hebrew  clan,  273. 

Naram-Sin,  king  of  Agade,  153 ;  date 
of,  156, 159;  called  "god,"  168, 199. 

Nasamones,  a  branch  of  Berber 
Hamites,  117. 

Nasr,  Arabic  vulture  god,  36. 

Nebuchadnezzar  I,  king  of  Babylon, 
cir.  1130  B.C.,  154,  219. 

Nebuchadnezzar  II,  king  of  Babylon, 
604-562  B.C.,  154;  repaired  temple 
of  Ishtar  at  Erech,  257. 

Nejd,  a  region  in  central  Arabia,  4. 

Nergal,  god  of  Kutu  or  Kutha,  215; 
later,  god  of  underworld,  216;  ori- 
gin of,  216  ff . ;  a  Sumerian  god,  217 ; 
worship  in  Palestine,  Phoenicia,  and 
Athens,  217,  n.  2. 

Nestle,  E:,  284. 

Neubaur,  A.,  230. 

Neumahr,  Melchior,  18. 

Nidaba,  the  grain  god  of  Gishgalla,218. 

Nina,  goddess  of  the  city  Nina,  185; 
a  Semitic  goddess,  187  ff. ;  cult  of, 
188  ff. ;  picture  of,  189;  daughter  of 
Ea,  195. 

Nina,  one  of  the  districts  of  Shirpurla, 
185 ;  a  Semitic  settlement,  192 ;  col- 
ony of  Eridu,  198,  200. 

Ninagidkhadu,  a  name  of  Ishtar  of 
Erech,  256. 

Nineveh,  capital  city  of  Assyria,  261 ; 
name  written  by  same  ideogram  as 
Nina,  187,  261 ;  a  Semitic  town,  222 ; 
Ishtar  goddess  of,  261. 

Ningirsu,  god  of  Girsu,  185 ;  husband 
of  Bau,  191;  origin  of,  191  ff.; 
"king"  and  "warrior"  of  Enlil, 
191,  n.  7,  196,  202;  connected  with 
Tammuz,  193;  developed  Ishtar, 
193  ff . ;  became  a  sun  god,  194. 

Ningishzida,  deity  developed  from 
Bau-Ishtar,  190;  coordinate  with 
Tammuz,  264. 

Ninib,  another  name  for  Ningirsu,  q.v. 

Ninkharsag,  originally  an  Ishtar,  186. 

Ninlil,  spouse  of  Enlil,  203. 

Ninmar,  a  goddess,  daughter  of  Nina, 
188. 

Nippur,  one  of  the  oldest  Babylonian 
cities,  162;  first  held  hegemony  in 
Babylonia,  163;  antiquity  of,  202; 
Sumerian  foundation,  204;  some 
Semitic  elements,  204  ff. 


GENERAL    INDEX 


333 


Noldeke,  Theodor,  3,  6,  22,  44,  53,  88, 
227  278 

Nowack,  Wilhelm,  85,  93,  99, 115,  238, 
296. 

Numerals,  Hamitic  and  Semitic  alike, 
9;  the  decimal  system,  170;  Suiue- 
rian  system  sexagesimal,  ibid. 

Nusku,  Assyrian  fire  god,  origin  un- 
certain, 232,  n.  2. 

Oannes,  Berossos's  name  for  Ea,  196. 

Oasis,  centre  of  Arabian  life,  33,  39; 
Arabian  life  bound  up  in,  71;  proto- 
type of  Eden,  96,  n. ;  sacred  tracts, 
112;  in  North  Africa,  117;  signifi- 
cance of,  in  Semitic  religion,  179  S. 

Odyssey,  249. 

Oehler,  G.  F.,  283. 

Oman,  women  of,  44,  57. 

Oppert,  Jules,  158,  210,  225. 

Osiris,  water  god  of  Egypt,  116. 

Ovid,  242. 

Ox,  symbol  of  Sin,  significance  of, 
201. 

Palestine,  physical  features  of,  144; 
produce  of,  145;  conquest  of,  by 
Semites,  146. 

Palgrave,  William  Gifford,  6,  17,  44, 
47,  57,  74,  75,  77. 

Palm,  date,  cultivated  in  Arabian 
oases,  33,  39;  extent  in  prehistoric 
time,  75 ;  in  Arabia,  75,  n.  4 ;  names 
of,  in  Semitic  languages,  76 ;  primi- 
tive name,  ibid. ;  importance  to 
Arabian  and  primitive  Semitic  life, 
77  ff. ;  cultivation  of,  78;  sexes  of, 
recognized,  ibid. ;  gives  name  to  a 
sacred  place,  79, 126  ff. ;  connected 
by  Semites  with  knowledge  of  hu- 
man sexuality,  79,  91 ;  sacred  in 
Arabia, 88;  Israel, 89ff .,  Bab.,90ff., 
159  ff. ;  artificial  fertilization  of,  91, 
161  ff. ;  significance  of,  in  Gen., 

92  ff. ;  tree  of  knowledge  and  life, 

93  ff. ;  Arabic  poem  on,  95;  etymol- 
ogy of  Ishtar  connected  with,  104  ff. ; 
in  Egypt,  117,  118;  at  basis  of  Ham- 
ito-Semitic culture,  119;  picture  of, 
in  Babylonian  writing,  160;  neces- 
sity made  oasis  countries  earliest 
seat  of  its  culture,  162 ;  a  palm  or- 
chard in  Babylonia,  ibid.;  palm  in 
Semitic    religion,    179  ff. ;     sacred 
palm  at  Eridu,  197 ;  at  Nakhla,  236 ; 
among  the  Kenites,  285;  at  Sinai, 


ibid.;  a  totem  in  a  Judahite  clan, 
286 ;  connection  with  Yahwe,  286  ff . 

Palmyra,  an  oasis  150  miles  northeast 
of  Damascus,  232 ;  Al-Lat  and  Sha- 
mash  worshipped  there,  234  ff. 

Paphos,  seat  of  worship  of  Asbtart  in 
Cyprus,  249  ff . 

Passover,  a  festival,  108  ff. ;  nomadic 
festival,  109;  festival  of  Yahwe, 
281  ff. 

Paulitschke,  Philipp,  21,  55. 

Pausanias,  250,  253,  266,  267,  313,  314, 
315,  316,  317. 

Payne,  Edward  John,  14,  39, 157, 162, 
172,  173,  175,  176,  177. 

Peake,  Arthur  S.,  141. 

Peiser,  F.  E.,  46,  53,  219,  311. 

Perrot  and  Chipiez,  173. 

Persians,  Semitic  influence  on,  310  ff. 

Peru,  civilization  and  religion  of, 
175  ff. 

Peschel,  Oscar,  12, 13, 16. 

Petermann,  A.,  75,  79,  98, 161, 171. 

Peters,  John  P.,  156, 199,  204,  292. 

Petra,  capital  of  Edom,  seat  of  the 
worship  of  Al-Lat,  233  ff . 

Petrie,  W.  M.  Flinders,  274. 

Philistines,  origin  of.uncertain,231,n.  6. 

Philo  of  Byblos  (Gebal),  37, 150,  231. 

Philostorgius,  99. 

Phoenicia,  beginnings  of  its  religion, 
149 ;  goddesses  in,  243  ff. 

Piepenbring,  Charles,  281,  284,  291. 

Pietschmann,  Richard,  93, 112,  245. 

Pinches,  T.  G.,  184. 

Pindar,  314. 

Pithecanthropus  erectus,  13. 

Pliny,  239. 

Polyandry,  30,  39  ff. ;  not  universal, 
40  ff. ;  theory  of,  52  ff . ;  did  Semites 
practise?  59  ff. ;  in  India,  ibid. ;  in 
Thibet,  ibid. ;  among  Britons,  60; 
in  many  parts  of  the  world,  ibid.; 
causes  of,  ibid.;  Semitic,  62  ff.; 
combined  with  polygamy,  63;  Thi- 
betan displaces  Nair,  65  ff.,  69  ff.; 
began  before  Semitic  dispersion,  68; 
imposed  restraints  on  men,  72;  not 
found  in  lowest  social  develop- 
ments, 72  ff. ;  among  Hamites,  74, 
115  ff. ;  among  Nasamones,  117 ; 
effects  of  Semitic,  322. 

Polybius,  253,  266. 

Polygamy,  40  ff. ;  mingled  with  poly- 
andry, 61  ff. ;  among  the  rich  in 
agricultural  countries,  171  ff. 


334 


GENERAL   INDEX 


Prescott,  William,  175,  176, 177. 
Prestwich,  Joseph,  156. 
Price,  Ira  M.,  164,  185, 186, 188. 
Pronouns   of    Hamitic    and   Semitic 

alike,  9. 
Ptolemy,  Claudius,  32. 

Qa'aba,  sanctuary  of  Allah  at  Mecca, 
132  ff . ;  originally  a  heathen  shrine, 
ibid. ;  Al-Uzza  worshipped  at,  235  ff. 

Qazwini,  an  Arabic  writer,  78. 

Quatrefages  de  Breau,  Jean  A.  de,  13, 
14. 

Races,  origin  of  white,  15  ff. ;  divi- 
sions of,  16;  Mediterranean,  18. 

Radau,  Hugo,  157,  158,  160,  161,  163, 
166,  167,  168,  169,  180,  181, 182,  184, 
186, 187,  188,  189,  192,  197,  198,  199, 
200,  202,  205,  211,  213,  214,  217,  220, 
225,  229,  251,  256. 

Ramman,  temple  of,  in  Ashur,  222; 
in  prehistoric  time,  226 ;  extent  of 
his  worship,  224;  worshipped  by 
Anu-banini,  etc.,  225;  member  of 
second  triad,  ibid.;  name  means 
"  thunderer,"  226;  a  god  of  fertil- 
ity, 228  ;  a  transformed  Ishtar,  229 ; 
an  ox,  228,  n.  7. 

Ramsay,  William  M.,  312,  313,  314. 

Ratzel,  Friedrich,  12,  24,  25. 

Rawlinson,  George,  156. 

Reclus,  Elie,  40,  59,  61,  124, 125. 

Reinisch,  Leo,  48,  55, 100. 

Reisner,  George  A.,  31,  106,  157,  158, 
165,  205,  228,  246. 

Renan,  Ernst,  321. 

Reubenites,  271;  in  Egypt,  272. 

Re'ville,  Albert,  148, 173, 174,  177. 

Rhea,  a  Phrygian  goddess,  same  as 
Attis,  313. 

Rhodes,  Ashtart  worship  in,  252. 

Ribeiro,  a  geologist,  14. 

Richter,  Max  Ohnefalse,  87,  252. 

Ridpath,  John  Clark,  13, 15,  25. 

Ripley,  William  Z.,  7, 16, 17, 18, 19,  20. 

Ritter,  Carl,  78. 

Robertson,  T.,  275,  292. 

Robinson,  George  L.,  152. 

Rogers,  Robert  W.,  156,  163,  192,  199, 
202,  217,  220. 

Rome,  mother  goddess  in,  178;  Ash- 
tart  worship  in,  253. 

Rouvier,  Jules,  230. 

Sabaea,  economic  condition  of,  124; 


kingdom  of,  succeeded  Ma'in,  ibid.  ; 
probably  had  a  precursor  in  north 
Arabia,  125. 

Sacy,  S.  de,  79. 

Sahara,  once  submerged,  18. 

Saho  language,  10. 

Sale,  George,  39. 

Salkhad,  a  seat  of  the  worship  of  Al- 
Lat,  233. 

Samura,  name  of  a  tree  at  Nakhla, 
236. 

Sargon,  king  of  Agade,  153 ;  conquered 
Amorites,  146;  father  of  Naram-Sin, 
155;  deified,  168;  worshipped  Sha- 
mash  and  Ishtar,  213. 

Sarpanit,  goddess  of  Babylon,  spouse 
of  Marduk,  207  ;  name  derived  from 
sun,  209;  a  reflection  of  Marduk, 
210. 

Sarzec,  Ernest  de,  160,  180,  183,  184, 
186, 187,  188,  189,  190,  191,  192, 193, 
198,  207,  210,  211,  214,  218,  220,  260, 
261. 

Sayce,  A.  H.,  4,  24, 102,  106,  118, 196, 
197,  209,  211,  228,  232,  283. 

Schaff ,  Philip,  317. 

Scheil,  V.,  156,  181, 183,  184, 196,  201, 
310. 

Schmidt,  Nathaniel,  8,  25,  272. 

Schrader,  Eb.,  5,  28,  29,  43,  90,  102, 
106,  146,  168,  214,  229,  230,  284,  285. 

Schultz,  H.,  284. 

Schurer,  Emile,  318. 

Schwally,  Friedrich,  95,  121. 

Semiramis  in  myth  of  Dekerto-Atar- 
gatis,  243. 

Semites,  theories  of  cradle  land,  1  ff. ; 
relation  of  language  to  Hamitic, 
9  ff . ;  said  to  belong  to  black  race,  16 ; 
evidence  insecure,  17 ;  one  stock  with 
Hamites,  20;  home  in  North  Africa, 
21;  why  entered  Arabia,  27, 119;  ra- 
cial characteristics,  28 ;  clans,  30  ff . ; 
totemistic,  35  ff . ;  economic  purpose 
of  clans,  38  ff. ;  family,  39  ff. ;  sexual 
propensities  of,  41  ff. ;  beena  mar- 
riage of,  55;  polyandry  of,  61  ff. ; 
passed  savagery  when  separated 
from  Hamites,  73 ;  knew  date-palm, 
75,  n.  4;  early  religious  conceptions, 
81;  sanctuaries,  sacrifices,  etc.,  106; 
gathered  in  oases  for  date  harvest, 
111 ;  driven  to  Arabia  by  crowding 
of  African  oases,  119;  mixture  of 
religion  of,  with  foreign,  147  ff. ;  in- 
fluenced Babylonian  syllabary,  168, 


GENERAL    INDEX 


335 


n.  1 ;  goddesses  of,  179  ff. ;  at  Khir- 
purla,  Lulubi,Kish,Guti,andAgade, 
186,  n.  1 ;  influence  on  civilization, 
ch .  viii ;  both  evil  and  good,  309  ff. ; 
good  predominates,  322. 

Sennacherib,  first  to  mention  Ishtar 
of  Arbela,  262. 

Sergi,  G.,  8, 16,  17, 18,  20,  26, 117,  270, 
312,  313. 

Serpent,  nature  of,  in  Eden,  93,  96  ff. 

Sex,  perception  of,  represented  as  fruit 
of  tree  of  knowledge,  94 ;  what  Sem- 
ites attributed  to  knowledge  of, 
102 ;  connection  with  moral  advance- 
ment, 107;  and  religious  feeling, 
307  ff.,  321  ff. 

Shalraeneser  II,  king  of  Assyria,  154 ; 
called  Hadad,  "  Bir,"  227. 

Shamash,  god  of  Agade  and  Larsa, 
212;  worshipped  at  Agade  by  Sar- 
gon,  213;  antiquity  of,  213  ff. ;  orig- 
inally a  goddess,  probably  Sumerian, 
214. 

Shamashshumukin,  Semitic  idiom  in 
Sumerian  prayer  of,  165. 

Shams,  sun  goddess,  a  survival  of  the 
mother  goddess  in  south  Arabia, 
129  ff. 

Shamsu-ilnna,  Babylonian  king,  built 
a  fortress  to  Ramman,  225. 

Sharastani,  Mohammed,  99. 

Shidlamtaea,  an  epithet  of  Nergal,  215. 

Shirpurla,  temple  taxes  of,  158 ;  dates 
received  at,  159 ;  city  of  old  Baby- 
lonia, 162 ;  held  hegemony  at  dawn 
of  history,  163 ;  religion  of,  184  ff . ; 
districts  of,  185 ;  three  districts  Se- 
mitic, 185;  language  spoken  at, 
186  ff. ;  name  written  without  de- 
terminative, 260  ff. 

Sicily,  Ashtart  worship  in,  252  ff. 

Sidon,  religion  of,  150  ff. ;  Ashtart 
worship  in,  243  ff. 

Simeon,  a  tribe,  271. 

Sin,  a  god,  father  of  Mana,  199;  god 
of  Ur,  ibid. ;  a  transformed  Ishtar, 
200;  identified  with  moon,  202;  son 
of  Enlil,  ibid. ;  member  of  the  second 
triad,  ibid. ;  worshipped  by  the  Guti, 
217. 

Sin-gamil,  a  king  of  Ur  who  repaired 
temple  of  Nergal,  216. 

Sippar,  another  name  of  Agade,  212 ; 
Khallabi  near,  260. 

Skipwith,  Mr.,  283. 

Smend,  Rudolf,  140,  284. 


Smith,  George,  92,  197,  239,  241,  261, 
262. 

Smith,  George  Adam,  121,  139,  145, 
156,  230,  238. 

Smith,  Henry  Preserved,  89,  132,  275. 

Smith,  I.  G.,  317. 

Smith,  W.  Robertson,  7,  29,  30,  31,  32, 
35,  36,  39,  41,  51,  52,  54,  55,  57,  59, 
63,  64,  65,  66,  68,  70,  76, 81, 86, 87,  88, 
89.  92, 100, 101, 104, 105, 106, 107,  108, 
109,  112,  114,  123,  127, 132,  133, 136, 
138,  148,  152,  234,  235,  237,  251,  254, 
255,  265,  267,  279,  281,  283,  287,  289, 
291,  312. 

Social  organization,  ch.  ii;  effect  on 
religious  conceptions,  82;  trans- 
formed in  Arabia  by  time  of  Mo- 
hammed, 123. 

Socin,  Albert,  140. 

Somali  language,  10. 

Somalis,  Somaliland,  8,  20,  24,  25,  48, 
65. 

Sozomen,  99. 

Spencer,  Herbert,  40,  53, 59,  60,  63,  66, 
72. 

Spiegelberg,  Wilhelm,  283. 

Sprenger,  A.,  4,  24,  44, 138. 

Springs,  sacred  among  the  Semites, 
92  ff. 

Stade,  B.,  95,  121,  147,  238,  270,  275, 
279,  284,  296. 

Starbuck,  J.  M.,  107. 

Starcke,  C.  N.,  40,  49,  51,  53,  59,  60, 
66,67. 

Steindorf,  G.,  10,  247. 

Steurnagle,  Carl,  251. 

Strabo,  42,  64,  101,  115,  123,  210,  250, 
253,  313,  314,  315. 

Strack,  Hermann  L.,  275. 

Strassmaier,  J.  N.,  46,  106,  226,  260. 

Stumme,  H.,  19. 

Suess,  Ed.,  13,  18. 

Sumerians,  problem  of,  164  ff. ;  argu- 
ments of  the  Halevy  school,  164  ff. ; 
counter  arguments,  165  ff. ;  solu- 
tion, 167  ff. ;  inventors  of  cuneiform 
writing,  167 ;  analogy  of  El-Amarna 
letters,  167  ff. ;  religious  argument, 
168;  pictorial  evidence,  170;  nu- 
merical system,  170  ff. ;  goddesses 
of,  180  ff. ;  Sumir  said  to  be  original 
form  of  Girsu,  192,  n.  1;  Sumerian 
kingdom  at  Nippur,  204. 

Sumula-ilu,  Babylonian  king,  witness 
to  the  early  worship  of  Marduk, 
209. 


336 


GENERAL   INDEX 


Surippak,  a  city  mentioned  in  Baby- 
lonian deluge  story,  259. 
Suti  or  Guti,  37 ;  their  religion,  217  ff. 

Tabari,  At-,  88. 

Tabernacles,  feast  of,  108;  descended 
from  old  Semitic  date  festival,  111, 
288  ff. 

Tacitus,  250,  251,  252,  266. 

Taif,  south  of  Mecca,  seat  of  worship 
of  Al-Lat,  233. 

Talab  Riyam,  a  south  Arabian  god, 
developed  from  Athtar,  129. 

Tallquist,  K.  L.,  158, 159. 

Tamesheq  language,  10. 

Tammuz,  general  features  of  his 
worship,  85  ff . ;  various  relations 
to  Ishtar,  85;  connected  with  vege- 
tation, 85  ff.,  86  ff .,  112  ff. ;  origin  of 
wailing  for,  86,  92  ff .,  114  ff . ;  festi- 
val of,  originally  a  fast  before  date 
harvest,  112,  289;  connected  with 
Bau-Ishtar,  190 ;  with  Ningirsu,  193 ; 
bewailed  at  Erech,  258;  survivals 
of,  263  ff . ;  nature  of,  264  ff . ;  called 
in  Phoenicia  Eshmun  and  Adon, 
265  ff . ;  connected  with  caravan 
clans,  268 ;  in  Yahwe  worship,  289  ff . 

Tanith,  name  of  Semitic  goddess  in 
North  Africa,  148,  150,  263;  mean- 
ing and  etymology  of  name,  253, 
n.  6 ;  mother  goddess,  254 ;  same  as 
Dido,  254  ff.;  "face  of  Baal,"  150, 
254. 

Tarkhu,  Hittite  god,  held  by  Jensen 
to  be  original  of  Atargatis,  240. 

Tashmit,  consort  and  reflection  of 
Nabu,  212. 

Tell-Ibrahim,  modern  name  of  Kutha, 
215. 

Telloh,  modern  name  of  Shirpurla, 
183. 

Tertullian,  255. 

Teutonic  pantheon, 178. 

Thatcher,  Oliver,  318. 

Theodulus,  son  of  Nilus,  237. 

Thibetan  polyandry,  61,  63  ff . ;  in 
Yemen,  ibid. ;  relation  to  Nair, 
69  ff. 

Thomas,  Richard  H.,  82. 

Threshold,  sacredness  of,  101  ff. 

Tiele,  C.  P.,  163,  168,  222,  223,  275. 

Tiglath-pileser  I,  king  of  Assyria,  154; 
called  Ramman,  god  of  "  west  coun- 
try," 226;  mentioned  Aramaeans, 
271. 


Tigris,  overflow  of,  156. 

Totem,  a  clan  shibboleth,  33  ff. ;  proofg 
of,  35  ff. ;  among  Hebrews,  36  ff. ; 
neighboring  tribes,  ibid. ;  break  up 
of,  63 ;  trees  as,  87 ;  at  Erech,  268. 

Toy,  C.  H.,  36,  86,  91,  95,  113,  282,  295. 

Tree  worship,  87  ff. ;  in  Abyssinia,  89; 
in  Palestine,  89  ff. ;  significance  of, 
in  Eden,  93-97 ;  at  Eridu,  197. 

Trumbull,  H.  Clay,  101,  282. 

Tylor,  E.  B.,  91. 

Tyre,  religion  of,  149  ff. ;  worship  of 
Ashtart  in,  244 ;  wealth  of,  300. 

Umu,  a  name  of  Ishtar  at  Erech,  256. 

Ur,  city  of  Babylonia,  162 ;  its  dynasty, 
157 ;  its  temple  taxes,  158 ;  its  god, 
Sin,  199;  held  a  prehistoric  hege- 
mony, 199,  256. 

Ur-Bau,  Patesi  of  Shirpurla,  153 ;  wor- 
shipped Nana  of  Erim,  186;  Nina, 
188;  Ea,  198;  Dumuzizuab,  211; 
meaning  of  his  name,  251,  n.  2. 

Ur-Enlil,  an  old  Babylonian  king, 
204,  n.  1. 

Ur-Gur,  king  of  Ur,  153,  202 ;  repaired 
temple  of  Shamash  at  Larsa,  212, 
256. 

Urkagina,  king  of  Ur,  153 ;  worshipped 
Bau,  189,  194. 

Ur-Nina,  king  of  Shirpurla,  153;  wor- 
shipped Nina,  188 ;  Bau,  189 ;  mean- 
ing of  his  name,  251,  n.  2. 

Ur-Ninib,  king  of  Isin,  256. 

Uruazagga,  one  of  the  districts  of 
Shirpurla,  185;  a  Semitic  settle- 
ment, 192. 

Uruk,  ancient  name  of  Erech,  256. 

Urzaguddu,  king  of  Kish,  203. 

Venus,  Latin  name  of  Ashtart,  249. 

Virgil,  253,  255. 

Vlock,  W.,  3,  28. 

Vogue,  Comte  de,  232,  233,  234,  239. 

Wadd,  a  Minsean  god,  130  ff. ;  name 
derived  from  root  "  to  love," 
131  ff. ;  developed  from  mother 
goddess,  ibid. ;  consort  of  Athirat, 
247. 

Waitz,  Theodor,  60. 

Wallace,  Alfred  Russell,  15,  18,  26,  74. 

Ward,  Wm.  Hayes,  184,  189,  194,  210. 

Weber,  Ferdinand,  281. 

Weber,  Otto,  124, 125,  130,  272. 

Weeks,  feast  of,  108;  not  primitive, 


GENERAL    INDEX 


337 


112  ff . ;  adapted  from  Tammuz  wail- 
ing preceding  date  festival,  113  ff . 

Weissbach,  F.  H.,  164,  168. 

Wellhausen,  Julius,  36,  53,  63,  68,  69, 
72,  79,  88,  89,  101,  108,  109,  111,  112, 
133,  134,  13(5,  147,  227,  233,  234,  235, 
236,  237,  238,  270,  280,  281,  283,  292, 
296. 

Wells,  sacred  among  Semites,  92  ff . 

Wellsted,  J.  R.,  57,  74,  75,  77,  78,  111, 
285. 

Westermarck,  Edward,  40,  41,  49,  51, 
53,  60,  66,  67. 

Wheat,  indigenous  to  Babylonia,  and 
one  of  the  first  grains  there  culti- 
vated, 157;  references  to  it  in  lit- 
erature, ibid.,  n.  2. 

White,  H.  A.,  243. 

White  races,  origin  of,  15  ff . ;  divisions 
of,  16. 

Whitney,  J.  D.,  14. 

Wiedemann,  A.,  8,  20,  26. 

Wife,  residence  of,  during  marriage, 
60  ff . ;  residence  of  husband  in  her 
tent  or  tribe,  54  ff . ;  subject  to  hus- 
band, 123. 

Wildeboer,  G.,  272,  275. 

Wilken,  G.  A.,  39,  47,  48,  61,  63. 

Wilkinson,  John  Gardner,  296. 

Winckler,  Hugo,  31,  64,  IOC,  109,  111, 
113,  130,  162,  163,  181,  198,  199,  205, 
209,  217,  227,  255,  270,  272,  274,  279, 
286,  289,  296. 

Winstanley,  W.,  49, 137. 

Women,  Semitic,  beauty  fades  early, 
42;  of  Oman,  44  ff. ;  lived  in  homes 
of  brothers  or  uncles,  45  ff.,  49  ff. ; 
residence  of  during  marriage,  50  ff. ; 
exalted  position  of,  53;  kept  chil- 
dren with  them,  54;  not  creatures 
of  man,  56  ff. ;  in  Babylonia,  57  ff. ; 
position  modified,  58  ff. ;  scarcity 
of,  62;  liberty  limited  in  Thibetan 


polyandry,  70 ;  desert  women  lower 

order,  71 ;    sacrifices  of,  in  Adonis 

worship,  246. 
Woodhouse,  F.  C.,  317. 
Wright,  William,  5,  10,  24,  28,  29,  312. 
Wustenfeld,  Ferdinand,  44,  235. 
Wylde,  Augustus  B.,  25,  49,  99,  136, 

138. 

Yagnth,  Arabic  lion  god,  35. 

Yahu-bidi,  king  of  Hamath,  284,  285. 

Yahumelek,  king  of  Gebal,  122,  244. 

Yahwe,  origin  of,  ch.  vii ;  a  Kenite 
god,  272;  supporters  of  this  view, 
275;  name  revealed  at  Horeb,  276; 
unknown  to  fathers,  ibid. ;  home  at 
Sinai,  277 ;  storm  god  theory  of 
Yahwe,  279 ;  a  transformed  mother 
goddess,  280  ff.,  287;  etymology  of 
name,  282  ff. ;  connected  with  palm, 
286  ff.;  Yahwe's  passover,  287  ff. ; 
connected  with  Ashtart  and  Tam- 
muz, 289  ff. ;  spiritual  possibilities 
of  covenant  with,  291,  301  ff. ;  be- 
came a  Baal,  2517  ff. ;  genesis  of 
spiritual  conception  of,  302  ff. ;  con- 
nection of  law  with,  304  ff. 

Yaqut  (Jacut),  44,  63,  76,  234. 

Ya'uq,  Arabic  horse  god,  36. 

Yeha,  town  in  Abyssinia,  135  ff. 

Yemen,  economic  condition  of,  124. 

Zebulon,  an  Israelitish  clan,  271. 
Zemzem,  the  sacred  spring  at  Mecca, 

133,  235,  236. 
Zimmern,  Heinrich,  10,  87,  103,  140, 

165,  200,  214,  215,  260,  274. 
Ziru-bani-ti,  a  folk  etymology  of  the 

name  Sarpanit,  209,  n.  8. 
Zohair,  an  Arabian  poet,  52. 
Zwemer,  S.  M.,  48,  77,  78,  91,  95,  111, 

124, 125, 132,  134,  159,  161. 


INDEX   OF   SCRIPTURE  REFERENCES 


GENESIS  PAGK 

ii 93,  96 

ii,  8 96 

ii,  9 95 

ii,  14 96 

ii,  15 96 

Hi 23,  89,  93,  96 

iii,  3 95 

iii,  9 95 

iii,  22 95 

xii,  4 271 

xii,  18 89 

xiv,  5 142 

xiv,  13 238 

xvii 280 

xvii,  10-12 99 

xviii 140 

xviii,  1 89 

xix 140 

xxiv 271,  278 

xxiv,  2 281 

xxiv,  9 281 

xxv,  12  ff. 32 

xxviii,  1-xxxii,  1     ....     271,  278 

xxviii,  22 290 

xxxi,  43 64 

xxxiv 100, 281 

xxxv,  8 89 

xxxvi 32 

xxxviii 90,  286 

xlvi,  17 31 

xlvii,  29 281 

xlviii,  5,  6 52 

xlix,  5  ff 272 


EXODUS 

ii,  16  ff 280 

iii,  1 280 

iii,  13 276 

iii,  14 283 

iii,  15 276, 283 

iv,  24,  25    ....      99,100,280,281 


MM 

vi,  2 276 

xii,  48 99,  280 

xiii 279 

xiv 279 

xv,  27 90,  285 

xviii,  12  ff 272,276 

xix 279 

xx 292 

xxi,  12-14 138 

xxiii,  16 288 

xxxii,  2 296 

xxxiv 109,292 

xxxiv,  18-20 110 

xxxiv,  22  ff 288 

LEVITICUS 

xvi 305 

xxiii,  34 288 

xxiii,  40-43 288 

xxv,  49 51 

NUMBERS 

v,  11-21 305 

x,  29  ff 277 

xxi,  27-30 142 

xxi,  29 141 

xxvi,  45 31 

xxxii,  12 251 

DEUTERONOMY 

i,  39 94 

v 292 

vii,  5 290 

vii,13 105,282 

xxiii,  17,  18 251 

xxiv,  1-3 45 

xxvi,  5 271 

xxviii,  4, 18 282 

xxxii,  17 87 

xxxiii,  2 277 

xxxiii,  29 249 

xxxiv,  3 90,  285 

39 


340 


INDEX  OF   SCRIPTURE   REFERENCES 


JOSHUA  pAGE 

v,  3,  9 280 

xiii,  21 238 

xiii,31 142 

xv,  32 227,  228 

xxiv,  14 276 

JUDGES 

i,  16 90,  277,  285,  288 

ii,  13 246 

iii,  7 247 

iii,  13 90 

iv,  5 89 

iv,  11 277 

iv,  17  & 277 

v 57 

v,  4ff 277 

v,  24  ff 277 

vi,  11 89 

vii,  25 36 

x,  6 148,24(5 

xi,40 289 

xvi,  23 230 

xx,  33 90 

xx,  47 277 

xxi,  13 227 

1  SAMUEL 

i 287 

ii 288 

vii,  4 246 

xv,  6 277 

xxvi,  19 297 

xxx,  26  ff 278 

xxx,  29 278 

xxxi,  4 280 

xxxi,  9 242 

2  SAMUEL 

i,  20 280 

v,2ff 230 

viii,  3 227 

1  KINGS 

i 138 

ii 138 

viii,  9 295 

viii,  10, 11 279 

viii,  21 295 

ix,  8 286 

x,  1  ff 124 

xi,  7,  33 141 

xii,  28 37,  298 


PACK 

xv,  18-20 226 

xviii,  19 247 

xix 277 

xx 226 

xxi 300 

2  KINGS 

iii,  4 140 

v,  17 227,  299 

v,  18 226 

vi,  24 226 

x,  15 277 

xvii,  24-34     139,  147, 149,  203,  217,  297 

xvii,  27,  28 29i> 

xxii,  13 304 

xxiii,  4 247,  291 

xxiii,  13 151 

xxiii,  14 290, 291 

1  CHRONICLES 

ii,  55      ........     277,278 

vii,  31 31 

x,  4 280 

JOB 

xxxvii,  4 279 

xxxviii,  1 279 

PSALMS 

xviii 279 

xviii,  10 91 

xxix,  3  ff 279 

Ixviii,  5  [4] 277 

Ixviii,  33 279 

civ,  13, 14 279 

cxlvii,  8, 16-18 279 

ISAIAH 

i,  13-15 302,  304 

v,  1-7 302 

xix,  1 279 

1,1 45,  302 

Ixv,  11 249 

Ixvi,  17 36 

JEREMIAH 

ii,28 148 

iii,  1  ff 302 

iii,  4 68 

vii,  18 246 

xi,  13 148 

xxxv 277 

xlviii,  7, 13,  46 141 


INDEX  OF  SCRIPTURE  REFERENCES 


341 


K/  1 .  K  I  KL  PAGE 

i 279 

viii,  1 113 

viii,  10 36 

viii,  14 85,  246 

xx 302 

xxii,  11 52 

xxvii 300 

xxviii 300 

xli,  18 90,  286 

HOSRA 

ii 302 

ii,5 151,297 

ii,  8 298 

ii,  12 151 

iii,  4 290 

iv,  13 89 

iv,  15 298 

vi,  6 304 

ix,  10 144 

ix,  15 298 

xi,  1  ff 306 

xii,  11 298 

AMOS 

iii,  2,  3 302 

v,  4ff 298 

v,  21  ff 298,  304 

v,  24,  25 302 

vi,  13 238 

vii,  14 145 


HABAKKUK 


iii. 

iii,  1 


279 
277 


ZECHARIAH  PAGK 

xii,  11 227 

LUKE 

xv,  16 145 

JOHN 

iv,  24 303 

xvii,  23 107 


ACTS 


314 


ROMANS 

ii,  28  ff 281 

iii,  30 280 


1  CORINTHIANS 


v,  vi  . 
x,  20. 
xiii  . 


2  PETER 


317 

87 

302 


307 


1  JOHN 

i,  5 302 

iv,  8, 16 302 


REVELATION 


xxi    .    . 
xxii,  1,  2 


96 
96 


REFERENCES   TO   APOCRYPHA 


TOBIT 


EPISTLE  OF  JEREMIAH 
42,  43 42,  210 

1  MACCABEES 

T,  43 238 

x,  83,  84 230 


xi,  4 


230 


2  MACCABEES 
xii,  26 238 


x,  10 
xxiv 

XXV 


xvii 


ETHIOPIC  ENOCH 


PSALTER  OF  SOLOMON 


.    .     96 

89,96,2*. 

96 


96 


342 


REFERENCES  TO  QUR'AN 


REFERENCES  TO  QUR'AN 


PAGE 

ii,  140 132 

iv 131 

iv,23 65 

iv,  26 64 

iv,  29 123 

v,  2,  3 132 

v,  96-98 132 

vi,  100 36 


PAOK 

xix,  23 89 

xix,  25 89 

xxxiii,  48 46 

liii 131 

liii,  19 235 

Ixv,  1-6 46 

Ixv,  6 50 

cxii 131 


History,  Prophecy,  and  the 
Monuments. 


BY 


JAMES  FREDERICK  McCURDY,  Ph.D.,  LL.D., 

Professor  in  Oriental  Languages  in  University  College,  Toronto. 


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